The Middle Of Nowhere

2/18/24

“I mean if you tell them the grass is green, it makes them start expecting the grass to look a certain way - your way - instead of some other way that may be just as good, and maybe much better”

This quote, from J.D. Salinger’s Teddy, has remained with me since I came across it last week, as it has put a thought I’ve had into much better words. A thought related to our perception of nature, the world, and reality itself. Allow me to attempt to give you an example.

With one hand, I crumpled up the red wax-paper wrapper of a Hostess cherry pie, and crammed it regretfully into the passenger door pocket. Then, with my right thumb and forefinger, I began slowly pinching sugar crumbs off my black leather vest and, with great care, bringing them back up to my mouth. I looked up, and out the window, facing south on Tecopa Hot Springs Road. Beyond the road were the shallow sloping hills of some sort of mineral deposit, making the bumpy ground appear as though covered in bird droppings. Beyond that, surrounding us on every side, were badlands consisting of miles of hard-packed mounds of dirt, in various shades of tan and white and black. And beyond that, 20 miles northeast over the Nopah Range Wilderness Area, loomed Nevada’s western boarder.

Caitlin and I had left the San Bernardino mountains at roughly 11:00am the day before, and had still not yet managed to cross into Death Valley National Park, for which there are two chief reasons. Firstly, while completely empty on the map, the east edge of the Southern California boundaries are full of incredible and inviting texture. Jagged mountains rise up over vast dry valleys, with dunes of sand collecting here and there. Badlands, washes, and brown meadows appear randomly, collecting in basins. It’s the sort of landscape that makes you think either nothing at all, or of the overwhelming possibilities of future exploration. We had made several stops, and ended up making camp off of Furnace Creek Road five miles south of Shoshone, CA.

Secondly, the boarders placed in these desert landscapes mean absolutely nothing to the earth. I don’t know the history of Death Valley NP, so maybe the boarders do matter and I don’t know, but as I sat there, picking crumbs out of my lap, I thought about how funny it all was. Technically, at that point, we had not been to Death Valley NP. We would not have been able to tell someone we’d visited the park. But the difference between the landscape we were in, and the park’s boarder eight miles due west, was practically nothing. After all, this particular park is the largest of its kind in the lower 48. Any area that big can’t be exactly the same from one end to another, and if it can then it certainly won’t start being different immediately outside of its boarders.

But when you say that one part of the desert is Death Valley, and another part of the same desert isn’t, you start “expecting the grass to look a certain way”, as Teddy would say. You start expecting something, I don’t know what, about that one part of the desert.

Now, there is of course Badwater Basin, which is the lowest point in America at 282 feet below sea level, and the site of the highest recorded air temperate on earth. And, in terms of geological features, it’s significant. But it looks very similar to the basins next to it, which look very similar to the basins next to them.

Even the phrase, “The Middle Of Nowhere”, does not accurately describe the way the earth really is. To the earth, each square inch is just as important as every other square inch. Those square inches might consist of different combinations of elements, but are all needed equally to make the earth a planet. So any point on the planet could have an equal claim to being in the middle of nowhere. Of course, when we say that, what we mean is that we are nowhere near any human developments. But you can see how that too makes you expect the grass to look a certain way.

Now, to be sure, Caitlin and I had a lovely time in Death Valley NP, and I say all of this not with distaste for the park, but with immense love for it, as well as everything surrounding it. I also say this because I try, whenever possible, to be aware of when my human bias keeps me from seeing the earth the way God does, as holistically significant. And perhaps because I am the Lorax, who speaks not just for the trees, and the brown barbaloots, but for the dirt as well, because the dirt has no tongue either.

(Clearly a dirt spokesman)