Midnight Road

Moonrise, California City

I've stood in this road a thousand times. Not this exact road, of course, but countless others just like it in every secret corner of the desert. The desert is a wild place, but by night it is something else, especially if you're alone ... something at once sheltering and scary. You wonder how everyone else can be asleep and missing it all, but at the same time you question your own sanity for not being safe in bed yourself. You feel at the center of the surrounding sky, but you realize that there is no center -- all is the same, of which you are a part. You can never capture it in words; you feel elated to be seeing it and sad at the same that no one else is. How does that R.E.M. song go: I have seen things that you will never see. All these memories over the years pile one on another until they all blend together into a background of glittering, fading points of light. But we are richer for the experience. Maybe my photography is a desperate attempt to keep some small part of that beauty from being forever lost, unseen by other eyes.

Date: July 7, 2001
Time: 11:27pm PDT
Location: California City, California
Camera: Olympus OM-1 on fixed tripod
Film: Kodak Ektachrome P1600 slide
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f/8
Exposure time: 20 seconds, with flash bulb
Scanned with Nikon Coolscan LS-10E