When my wife was in hospice care, I would occasionally step out to a small nearby park. And as I sat on the same shady bench day by day, visions of open desert landscapes began to appear, unbidden, in my mind. I wasn’t wishing to be gone, but…maybe I was dreaming for us both.

Whenever I hear the name “Mojave,’ I first think of space. Actually, I think of weird space. I can’t quite put my finger on the feel of that strange light and land. Or on those shape-shifting colors and scale.

These are places we pass by on the way to LA or Vegas. The world of sunburned, mirage-bent hills and valleys between Barstow and Baker. Rainbow Basin. Afton Canyon. Soda Lake. Cima Dome. Kelso dunes. Granite Mountains. Hole-in-the Wall. And south towards Ludlow and Amboy.

And then there’s the west, off 58 and 395, ringing Kramer Junction, or northwest from Boron, with sweeping views flecked here and there with lone, spiky Joshua trees.

A silent planet of basins; bajadas; hills; and sky.

And through this comes a slow-moving freight train with its own dusty, sun-bleached colors. You can’t really hear it from this distance. But there’s a low vibration that’s building…And it’s hardly moving…almost floating…hypnotic. It marks the space with a bygone presence that now strangely seems a part of things, like a rusted pickup or some bedsprings abandoned in a wash…made timeless…

…And then it’s gone. Moved on. Leaving just the landscape. Wind. Birds. Quiet. Where did that train come from? Where did it go?

Sometimes I feel like we get it wrong: the ghosts are those of us who are left behind. And we’re all watching trains move slowly across this dusty desert. Some days, viewing my own life from that distance seems about right.

But as Robinson Jeffers wrote in ‘The Bed by the Window:’ “We are safe to finish what we have to finish…” That poem is now framed and hanging above the same bed at Tor House in Carmel. We read it there together.

Photos are about all kinds of things, all sorts of thoughts and feelings, and what you bring to them in memories and dreams meets up with what surrounds you. Sometimes you’re happy, sometimes you’re sad. Maybe both.

But either way, for me, Space still equals Hope. I know there’s life amidst the Mojave’s saltbush and sand. Maybe in the shape of a Joshua tree. These are the scenes I saw from that park bench. That we both saw. And ever since, I’ve wanted to set my camera lens on infinity and point it at the horizon…and walk into that frame.

So here I am, Weez. Five years. It’s springtime, and the bones of the desert are blooming.

By Scott Atkinson

Mojave Trains

Simple Things

Tone Poems II