America - Day 14
I slept all the way through Utah during the night and this morning I woke up to the Nevada desert. The train glides along smoothly. I can see miles of golden scrub and brushwood, in the distance on each side are mountains covered in thick cloud. It must be raining over there, but here the land is dry and parched, what tracks I can see are dusty, with salt crystals like a sugar coating. Everywhere is flat, very flat and dead. It looks inhospitable, but every now and again we pass a couple of timber sheds and a house, looking not very smart and usually accompanied by a few wrecked cars. Someone at least is trying to make a living out here. We're on the old Pony Express route according to the Amtrak guide. This was the toughest part of the journey, with no water - made worst by the sight of water in the mountains, tempting but out of reach. I experience the slightly weird phenomenon of seeing rainbows in the desert. They are formed in the moist air over the mountains, but you are fooled to think the rain might fall here.
This is liminal space. I remember it from the Native American Vision Quest, where young men would be sent out into the desert for five days with only water. Here they learn't humility, powerlessness, the old mysteries and a reliance on the 'other' - when they returned tired and hungry but clean-souled they could be called men. The liminal space of the Israelites during their forty years of wandering, where struggles were waged, characters were formed and obedience taught. From where Moses would go up the mountain and hear God - but not see God. This mornings lectionary, Psalm 78 :
14 He led them with a cloud by day •
and all the night through with a blaze of fire.
15 He split the hard rocks in the wilderness •
and gave them drink as from the great deep.
16 He brought streams out of the rock •
and made water gush out like rivers.
17 Yet for all this they sinned more against him •
and defied the Most High in the wilderness.
The desert, the place of Jesus' temptation, to be 'for himself' and not for others. To answer ego with a no. The desert asks the question - do you know who you are. We pass a Native American burial ground. Deer antlers marking the graves. This ground is sacred.
We're in Reno, just 236 miles to go. The approach to Reno was slightly bizarre. We emerged from a valley, with barren hills rising on each side, piles of what looked like spoil heaps around an iron foundry - dead ground with a redness to it and eroded as though the heaps were never meant to be there. But these were not spoil heaps they were just more hills. Down by a dirty looking river there were two tents flapping in the wind, a man was stood outside. Then big Las Vegas style illuminated signs standing out of a haulage yard, advertising stores and amusement parks - seemed bizarre in the desert landscape. But maybe this is what a frontier town looks like - imagine driving through Birmingham on the M5 - but without Birmingham. Las Vegas is not far away, with it's neon signs and temptations in the desert.
I slept all the way through Utah during the night and this morning I woke up to the Nevada desert. The train glides along smoothly. I can see miles of golden scrub and brushwood, in the distance on each side are mountains covered in thick cloud. It must be raining over there, but here the land is dry and parched, what tracks I can see are dusty, with salt crystals like a sugar coating. Everywhere is flat, very flat and dead. It looks inhospitable, but every now and again we pass a couple of timber sheds and a house, looking not very smart and usually accompanied by a few wrecked cars. Someone at least is trying to make a living out here. We're on the old Pony Express route according to the Amtrak guide. This was the toughest part of the journey, with no water - made worst by the sight of water in the mountains, tempting but out of reach. I experience the slightly weird phenomenon of seeing rainbows in the desert. They are formed in the moist air over the mountains, but you are fooled to think the rain might fall here.
This is liminal space. I remember it from the Native American Vision Quest, where young men would be sent out into the desert for five days with only water. Here they learn't humility, powerlessness, the old mysteries and a reliance on the 'other' - when they returned tired and hungry but clean-souled they could be called men. The liminal space of the Israelites during their forty years of wandering, where struggles were waged, characters were formed and obedience taught. From where Moses would go up the mountain and hear God - but not see God. This mornings lectionary, Psalm 78 :
14 He led them with a cloud by day •
and all the night through with a blaze of fire.
15 He split the hard rocks in the wilderness •
and gave them drink as from the great deep.
16 He brought streams out of the rock •
and made water gush out like rivers.
17 Yet for all this they sinned more against him •
and defied the Most High in the wilderness.
The desert, the place of Jesus' temptation, to be 'for himself' and not for others. To answer ego with a no. The desert asks the question - do you know who you are. We pass a Native American burial ground. Deer antlers marking the graves. This ground is sacred.
We're in Reno, just 236 miles to go. The approach to Reno was slightly bizarre. We emerged from a valley, with barren hills rising on each side, piles of what looked like spoil heaps around an iron foundry - dead ground with a redness to it and eroded as though the heaps were never meant to be there. But these were not spoil heaps they were just more hills. Down by a dirty looking river there were two tents flapping in the wind, a man was stood outside. Then big Las Vegas style illuminated signs standing out of a haulage yard, advertising stores and amusement parks - seemed bizarre in the desert landscape. But maybe this is what a frontier town looks like - imagine driving through Birmingham on the M5 - but without Birmingham. Las Vegas is not far away, with it's neon signs and temptations in the desert.