For my summer vacation last year, I went to the Salton
Sea.
Salton
Sea is in California’s low desert, just north of Mexico.
It
was hot. About 110 degrees hot.
But
without hot, what is summer?
To
reach the Salton Sea from a desert oasis called Rancho Mirage, go straight down
Frank Sinatra, right on Bob Hope, cross Gerald Ford, turn right onto Dinah
Shore to I-10, fork onto Route 111 and pass through Mecca.
No
one was praying in Mecca. Hardly anyone
was even there. I wouldn’t be there either if I didn’t have to pass through
it.
The
only retail business I saw in Mecca was called 99 Cents. But it was closed. Permanently.
The
Salton Sea is actually not a sea, but a lake.
Okay,
let’s be truthful. The Salton Sea is
really a cesspool. That’s because
this “sea” or lake is so salinated that precious little life within or around
it can survive.
No
one is allowed to jump into the Salton Sea.
The fish jump out.
Our
first stop is Salton City.
The
streets of Salton City have beautiful names:
Seaview Drive, Crystal Lane, Salton Bay Drive, Honolulu Avenue, and so
on.
Clearly, property developers had high hopes for Salton City.
Their
hopes were dashed by Mother Nature.
The
“development” today is a bunch of barren empty plots on a grid bordered by
scores of power lines. It may be the
cheapest place to buy seafront property in the whole of the United States.
The
only sign of life in Salton City is way inland, on an exit ramp from the
highway, which has an ARCO Travel Center with a tower/marquee announcing what
they sell: gasoline, bags of ice,
propane, spare parts for RVs, and Jack-in-the-Box hamburgers.
Our
next stop is the Sonny Bono Natural Wildlife Center on the far south end of the
Salton Sea. The problem is this: there is no wildlife.
And
the sea water, which once came alongside this center, is long gone and cannot
be seen even with high powered-binoculars on the center’s observation deck,
which are corroded and broken anyway.
(Sonny Bono may have this,
babe—but it ain’t much.)
Near
the Sonny Bono Center are three power plants, from which noxious smoke spews
from gigantic chimneys into the air. As
if more poison were needed here.
The
nearest town to the Sonny Bono Center is Niland, whose magnificent
centerpiece—an L-shaped building with pillars and porticos—is empty and
dilapidated.
The
action, if you can call it that, is alongside Niland’s highway: a single motel called Motel.
Closed.
Nearby
is Bobby D’s “Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Pizza.”
Closed.
Buckshot
Deli & Diner appears to be open. Barely. Also, a liquor store called Liquor. (Liquor stores always manage to survive…)
We
carry on, veering east, toward Salvation Mountain.
Salvation
Mountain is an art installation, the result of 500,000 gallons of splattered
paint and twenty-eight years of spiritual fervor.
It was created by a drifter/visionary named Leonard Knight.
When
Leonard was 35 years old, he chanted the Sinner’s Prayer in a van outside his
sister’s house in San Diego and experienced a vision.
Leonard
joyfully returned to his native Vermont and went from church to church to
spread the simple message that had been conveyed to him by the vision he’d
experienced: Accept Jesus into your heart, repent your
sins, and be saved.
Church
leaders did not like Leonard’s simple message, which became even simpler when
he changed it to, simply, God is love.
(Churches
need organization, hierarchies and money to exist, grow and prosper. Priests and gurus know that people think they
have to work hard, maybe for many years, and donate lots of money, to become
spiritually gratified. For that reason,
hierarchal organizations don’t approve of simple messages. And they particularly don’t approve of direct
access to a higher power that cuts out the middleman.)
So,
Leonard spent years trying to piece together a hot air balloon from scratch so
he could launch his message—God is love—into
the sky.
But
he could never get his balloon off the ground.
When
Leonard settled in Slab City, near Niland and the Salton Sea, due to his fondness
for a hot desert climate, he decided to convey his message by creating a small
monument.
Leonard
could not pull himself away from his monument, which grew from small to big,
then bigger and bigger, until it was a hill.
Four
years later, Leonard’s hill collapsed.
What
did Leonard do?
He
thanked the Lord for demonstrating the danger his hill posed. And then Leonard started over, “with more
smarts,” as he put it.
He
built an even bigger hill, which grew into a mountain.
Leonard
Knight is now long gone.
But
his mountain remains.
Atop
the semi-dome of Salvation Mountain are these words: GOD IS LOVE.
Below
GOD IS LOVE is a large red heart, and within the heart are these words: Say
Jesus I’m a sinner please come upon my body and into my heart. (This was
the prayer/mantra Leonard was chanting when he experienced an epiphany and accepted
Jesus into his heart.)
Beyond
Salvation Mountain is Slab City, which makes Burning Man look like an effete
imposter.
Slab
City is the real thing, year-round—and no one from the high-tech elite is
flying in on private jets to show off their hip-ness and figure out how to
synthesize ecstasy and keep you transfixed to their social media sites and
apps.
Slab
City is a community of mobile homes that are not so mobile anymore.
Slab
City bills itself, The last free place.
And beyond Slab City is East Jesus.
East
Jesus gets its name from the pioneers that “settled” North America.
East
Jesus was slang the pioneers used when they were in the middle of nowhere or
lost. One pioneer would ask the other,
“Where the hell are we?” The other pioneer would scratch his nuts and say,
“Darn, must be East Jesus.”
And
now East Jesus truly exists, just beyond Salvation Mountain and Slab City.
When
we arrive, it is clear that East Jesus is not just the end of the road, but
also a portal to another reality—or surreality.
This
is signified by a simple framed glass door that stands all by itself, attached
to nothing. When you pass through this door, you are truly in East Jesus.
There
are no people here this day, though you have a sense that The Hills Have Eyes.
A
sign nailed over a shack window announces Terrible
Psychiatric Advice Inside 25 Cents.
A
hundred old television sets are stacked upon one another, seven-high, to create
a wall—or a bank of messages. Words and
phrases have been affixed to the screens such as Blah and Fake News and You Need More Stuff and Irri-tainment and Don’t be Yourself and This
Machine Kills Brain Cells.
One
display features a burned-out car, with this sign: Car-B-Que.
Other
displays feature modes of transportation:
a crashed plane, an abandoned boat, a vintage VW hippie bus adorned with
stickers, and a house that appears to have fallen from the sky and landed on
the Wicked Witch of the East.
These
various forms of transportation are unneeded for us to get back through the
portal, as we simply roll out as we’d rolled in, past a farewell sign:
Reality,
outside of East Jesus, means Bombay Beach, eighteen miles north, alongside the
Salton Sea.
Sixty
years ago, Bombay Beach was a gem of a resort.
Today,
Bombay Beach is a vision of the apocalypse.
The
main drag of Bombay Beach is Avenue A.
It
bustles with inactivity.
Bombay
Beach has its own landmark version of the Eiffel Tower or Washington
Monument. It is called Cell Phone
Tower. This is a real plus because it
means you get great cell phone service.
Bombay
Beach has a bar, just one, called Ski Inn.
Sixty
years ago, customers could water-ski right up to the bar.
No
one water-skis up to Ski Inn anymore.
The
reason no one water-skis up to Ski Inn anymore is because they can’t. They would have to leave their water-skis
about a half-mile away and walk the rest.
And
if they got wet while water-skiing, they would probably be on their way to
Pioneers Memorial Hospital, not Ski Inn.
Bombay
Beach is about what happens without water or when water goes bad.
A
nauseating, putrid stench fills the air throughout Bombay Beach.
You
know how, after a few minutes, noses adjust to stenches? This doesn’t
happen in Bombay Beach.
After
four hours’ circling the Salton Sea, we are overheated and manic-eyed, and
rolling back toward the material world, which in Rancho Mirage means a
gazillion country clubs and golf courses and, in nearby Palm Desert, every
shop, brand and fast food shack ever created.
Upon
returning to “reality,” I understand that were it not for being phenomenally
fortunate through family and some modicum of skill, I might have ended up in
Niland or Slab City or East Jesus.
So,
if it seems like at any point I have been poking fun at the folks who live in
these places, it is a misperception.
I’m
laughing with them at the material
world.
For
these are my people, the wild ones, the mavericks, the artists, the
rebels.
And
may God—or The Source or Mother Nature—bless them all.
