DESERT BALLERINA
On the Easter vacation of my Sophomore year in High School I signed up for a week long field trip with a dozen other kids on a yellow school bus to a place I had never been, the Southern California desert.
The sun was just breaking and the school bus idled in the yard. We passed a stout woman in levis and short, cropped hair at the wheel as we all piled on. Mr. Lodester, a roly poly biology teacher in a floppy fisherman’s hat followed us up the stairs. The doors closed and the bus’s gears groaned.
The suburbs gradually faded into the semi arid farmlands of the south. The coast ranges towered in the west and the foothills in the east rose toward the Sierra Nevada mountains. The day wore on. The spreading farms grew spotty and began to fade into semi arid brush land. By late afternoon, we had reached the desert, The worn, naked mountains bleeding with sweeping alluvial fans grew higher as we twisted into their brown, beige and pink sculpted forms of entwined limbs and torsos, heaps of flesh.
It was sunset when the bus pulled over. We wandered over the scratched soil gathering desiccated sagebrush and soon had a fire going. When the flames burned down to charcoal, the bus driver threw on a grill. She told us her name was Barb. Mr. Lodester fanned the coals with his hat while dropping hamburger patties one by one. Barb tossed buns around the edge and sliced onions and tomatoes on an old cutting board. Sodas were opened. The stars filled the sky as we ate. Mr. Lodester told us we needed to walk off dinner before bed. We followed him into the dark. When the firelight faded, he turned to us with a grin on his face. A glowing wand appeared in his had. “A black light reveals the secrets of the desert night.”, he whispered. He waved it at our feet and the earth became alive. A carpet of florescent green shapes scurried at out feet. “Scorpions!”, he bellowed. “Millions of them! But don’t worry. They’re not poisonous.” Stingers bounced and claws waived. When we rolled out our sleeping bags on the sand and crawled in, we pulled them over our heads and drew their drawstrings tight.
I dreamed I was in a car driving through the desert. My father was at the wheel. He turned to me and patted me on the head. I was flooded with affection. I reached for him. He leaned on the brakes. We glided to a stop. His arm stretched in front of me. His hand clasped the door handle and the door swung open. The side of the road was covered with abandoned luggage, scattered boxes. The luggage began to vibrate then flew open. The tops of the boxes popped off with the staccato burst of a string of fireworks. Their empty maws glowed a reddish black. I recoiled, throwing myself against my father’s side. “What are you afraid of?”, he asked. “They are welcoming you.”
The next day the bus climbed high into the mountains. Slowly, imperceptibly they turned from the naked bodies of rock I had witnessed the day before, to living, breathing arms of earth that seemed to embrace me with an overwhelming sense of ecstatic déjà vu. The air was pure and nourishing. The plain below glowed and boiled. The sky felt infinite. When the bus ground to a stop and we followed Mr. Lodester out into the billowing mountainside, an absolute silence I had never experienced filled my ears with a finely honed hum that slowly morphed into a beautiful ringing. My eyes were closed. When I opened them. I was alone. The other kids were following Mr. Lodester into a ravine. I trotted after them.
They had surrounded Mr. Lodester who was standing in front of an eye level, fist sized hole in the wall of the ravine. A fleshy blond girl with a pretty smile standing next to me tugged at my shirt and whispered. “Mr. Lodester says there is something amazing in there but he won’t tell us what it is. See that stick in his hand? He’s going to prod it to make it come out. What if it’s a snake or something? Lizards are OK but some snakes are poisonous.”
“Some lizards are poisonous.”, I smiled.
“What lizards?”, she demanded.
“Gilla Monsters.”
“Oh my God, you’re right! I forgot about Gilla monsters!” She grabbed my arm.
Suddenly Mr. Lodester pulled the stick out of the hole and dropped it at his feet. “Step back, everyone!”
We all shuddered and moved back, our eyes glued to the opening. A smile bloomed on Mr. Lodester’s face. He bent his arm and lifted it. A dark, stalk emerged and touched his elbow. It tapped it a couple of times before another stalk appeared. Then another. Our hearts were in our throats as a huge tarantula appeared in the sunlight. Slowly, cautiously it crept onto Mr. Lodester’s arm. As it moved toward his face, he nudged its forelegs gently with a finger. It stopped, frozen for a moment then turned around and crawled down his arm. He carefully extended it, swung it, wrist bent and hand down, back to the hole. The tarantula sauntered off and disappeared back into its den.
The other kids breathed a sigh of relief and my eyes took in the desert again. The barren land, rocks and sediments without their coats of vegetation were vibrant and brilliant. The landscape swept away for miles, an endless expanse that rather than overwhelm a boy who had never felt so small, seemed to call to me, to fill me with an inexplicable relief, almost like seeing a loved one I thought I would never see again. As my eyes wandered back to the ravine, I noticed Mr. Lodester looking at me. He smiled.
The bus slowly growled its way through the desert and the day went on forever as the country unfurled itself before me. Yet when the sun began to set and we once again pulled over to make camp for the night, it seemed like the day hadn’t lasted an hour. I sat in front of the fire digesting another delicious charcoal roasted dinner. The blond girl from the ravine sat down next to me.
“Do you want to be a scientist?”
I was delighted. “I don’t know, a naturalist maybe. I’m not so interested in the make up of life but more the life itself, the interaction between animals and other animals and plants.” I looked long and hard into the glowing coals. " You know, I think what attracts me most to natural history, to nature is the beauty of it, the profound and ever varied combination of colors and forms and patterns all alive, all moving, everything constantly changing."
“Ecology.”, she smiled.” I’m kind of like that too. I’d rather be hiking than sitting in a lab. Have you ever been to the desert?“
“Never. Have you?”
“Never. What’s your name?”
“I'm Bill. I’d rather watch a frog for hours on the side of a pond than stick pins in its arms and legs and dissect it. What‘s yours?”
She shuddered. “Yuck! Did you ever do that?”
“In Junior High biology they tried to make me do it but I wouldn’t.”
“Good! I am Consuela. You know, I’m the only one of my brothers and sisters that likes science.”
I stirred the coals with a stick. “How many do you have?”
“Three brothers and three sisters. I’m the oldest girl. How many brothers and sisters do you have?”
“None.”
She seemed genuinely surprised. “None? Just you and your parents?”
“Just me and my mom. My dad is gone.”
"Gone? When did he die?"
"Recently."
She shook her head. “Wow. That’s so weird. Weren't you lonely?”
"Sometimes. Yes."
"Don't you have relatives? Don't you go to church?"
"No."
I answered her confused stare with a confession. "Rising above my home is a series of chaparral hills
full of hidden ravines, abandoned quarries, trickling creeks, glimmering
ponds, all teeming with life. I have captured, examined, observed every
example of flora and fauna the hills had to offer. I spend almost all my
free time there."
The glowing coals lit her face. She smiled "Mother Nature is your family."
As we stared into the darkness, another fire lit up. We could see several figures milling around it preparing their own camp and meal for the night. A man began to sing. Soon a melodic chorus filled our ears.
“Consuela eyes lit up. “They’re singing in Spanish! Huelga!”
“What’s huelga?”
“Huelga! Strike! They are farm workers singing about striking! What are they doing in the desert? I wonder if Cesar is with them?”
“Cesar?”
“Cesar Chavez!”, she frowned. “He is helping the oppressed farm workers rise up! I can’t hear them too well!” She got up and stomped to the other side of the fire then into the darkness.
A familiar figure lumbered over and sat next to me. “I think she likes ya, kid.”, muttered Barb. We sat in sublime silence. The drifting lyrics mingled with the popping and sputtering fire.
My father was back in my dreams that night. I was a little boy riding on his shoulders as he walked through the desert toward a run down house with a crumbling porch. A couple of neon signs in a dark window blinked beer and soda. A painted plank swaying in the breeze read “The He’s Not Inn”. He marched up the stairs, pushed open the door and stepped into a black void glimmering with dim lights and reeking with unfamiliar smells. A voice called out my father’s name, then another voice. Pasty faces with glasses pressed to their lips and cigarettes dangling from drooping fingers began to emerge out of the darkness. A distant song wavered from a glowing jukebox. My father lifted me from his shoulders and placed me on the bar. A burly bartender poured a short draft and pressed it into my hands. “Junior’s first.”, he rumbled.
“Junior’s first!” rang out in the bar, then again, then in unison. “Junior’s first!”
The morning sun was caressing the landscape and the bus was once again lurching up and up into the mountains. The only clue we had as to where we were going was something Mr. Lodester had muttered over breakfast, something about a primordial valley. Around noon it became obvious that we were approaching the summit. The road leveled out and stretched across a line of peaks then turned onto a weathered path of hair pin curves hanging precipitously above a shimmering valley far below. If any of us had the nerve to glance at the sure death drop, it was only once. When we finally had the courage to again look out the windows, we had survived the descent and were rolling along a stunningly beautiful valley piled with amazing rock formations and completely devoid of even the hardiest of cacti. I had never seen anything like it, even in books. It was other worldly but it did not intimidate me in the least. Then the bus slowed and pulled up to a huge tilting slab of rock that looked like it had fallen from space and stabbed the earth.
Mr. Lodester rose to his feet. “OK, everybody, up and at ’em! We’ve got a time machine waiting for us!” We followed him into the shadow of the overhang that grew darker and darker. Rather than narrow, it seemed to open, its ceiling rising like a cathedral. Just as we began to lose sight of even our feet below us, Mr. Lodester stopped and illuminated the darkness with a powerful flashlight. We stood in front of a fifteen foot wall thirty feet wide covered from top to bottom with dancing figures, racing game, spiraling glyphs and images I could not have even imagined all seeming to move, to shimmer, to dance with each other. A shiver ran up my spine.
Once again, Consuela was at my side. “Oh, Bill, just look at it.”
Mr. Lodester’s voice echoed against the walls of the cavern. “This is a well kept secret in the academic community. Very few people have seen it and it’s been kept safe that way but I wanted you to see it because I know it will change at least one of your lives for the better.”
“What are all those spirals?”, one of us asked.
“The spiral is transcultural and is as ancient as rock art. It’s thought to represent life from beginning to end, the repetition of season and growth, time and the universe itself.”
“I see a swastika! What’s that all about?”, demanded another.
“The bent cross is a symbol found in almost all ancient cultures. The Nazis stole it. The Hopi called it the four arms of destiny. In ancient Sanskrit it meant well being. Throughout pre-history it symbolized order and goodness.”
I was staring at painting of an animal with enormous horns, almost as big as the animal itself. Suddenly I remembered an illustration in a book of ancient mammals. “Is that a painting of an extinct, ice age ram?”, I asked. “Are these paintings that old?”
The look of surprise on Mr. Lodester’s face slowly morphed into intense scrutiny. He stared at me without saying a word. Then he smiled. “Perhaps.” His eyes scanned our faces. “No one knows how old this time machine is. What we do know is that it is a window into where we come from, who we are and maybe, if we’re smart enough, a guide to where we are going.” He placed the torch on a rock and let us take it all in. Slowly everyone's interest faded but mine did not. I stared at the magical figures. They began to stare back.
We camped for the night not far from the petroglyph gallery in the small hollow of an ancient streambed full of fossil shells which we excitedly collected. Mr. Lodester made us put them back where we found them.
Consuela rolled her sleeping bag out next to mine as the stars filled a moonless night. “I don’t think I have ever seen so many stars. There is almost more light than darkness.”
“I have never seen near as many. It’s unbelievable.”, I marveled.
“I think you impressed Mr. Lodester with your question about the ram.”, she murmured. “How is it that you knew that?”
“I spend a lot of time buried in books.”, I sighed. “Too much time.”
"Science books?", she asked.
"Well, yes, but others, mostly others, art books, travel books, novels, poetry, plays...."
"Stuck in a library instead of out living."
"Living in books, I guess."
“Well now you’re making up for it.”, she teased as she pulled her sleeping bag over her shoulders. “Good night and sleep tight.”
My mother and I slowly ascended the steps to my father’s apartment. A couple of dozen newspapers were scattered at the door. The mailbox was overflowing. An overpowering, nauseating stench filled the air. There was no answer to our loud knocking. My mother went to find the manager. A dim sun strained through high clouds. I put both hands on the railing and let all my weight rest on them as my head spun and my heart sank into an abyss. The manager nervously fiddled with the lock. My mother turned to me and took my collar in her hands. “Only one of us should go in and I think it should be me.” I nodded. She followed the manager into the apartment. I heard a bloodcurdling scream. The manager rushed out and threw up at my feet.
“Wake up, boy! For God’s sake, boy, wake up!”
I was staring into Mr. Lodester’s strained face. His hands were on my shoulders. Barb was standing over him. I was half out of my sleeping bag. I was back in the desert.
“It definitely was not a seizure.”, said Mr. Lodester.
“Barb shook her head. “That must have been one hell of a nightmare.”
Consuela was behind them. “Are you OK, Bill?”
I offered her a grateful smile. “Thanks. Just a bad dream.”
“Well get out of that sleeping bag and come to breakfast.”, ordered Mr. Lodester.
That day was the best so far. We explored the magical valley on foot, each of us wandering on our own but never out of site of Mr. Lodester. If we found anything interesting, we would get his attention and he would gather the rest of us around and discuss each new wonder: a road runner posing proudly at the top of a hill, an enormous ceremonial spear head laying on the desert floor untouched for centuries, a sidewinder slithering down a sand dune.
It was late afternoon when I climbed a large rock and found myself face to face with the biggest lizard I had ever seen. When I called Mr. Lodester, it darted into a crevice.
I peered over Mr. Lodester’s shoulders as the other kids clambered up the rock. “Is that a desert iguana? I didn’t think they got that big. It must be three feet long. Look at that tail! It’s so fat, the lizard can’t squeeze it into the crack.” I reached for the quivering tail that had a life of its own.
“Don’t touch it!”, ordered Mr. Lodester. “It’s a decoy. It will drop it in a second.”
“But why is it so big?", asked a boy behind me.
Consuela had come up next to me. “It looks like he’s waving it at us.”
“He is.”, said Mr. Lodester. If we were a coyote, that tail would satisfy us and we wouldn’t waste our energy trying to dig out the iguana from the crack, but we’re not a coyote. It would take a long time for the iguana to grow back a tail like that and the next time he meets a coyote, he might not be so lucky.”
That night, Barb joined me as we sat around the campfire. “Have you recovered from your nightmare? I hope you don’t have bad dreams all the time.”
I thanked her but I changed the subject. “Today I found the biggest lizard I’ve ever seen, a desert iguana. It forced itself into a crack but couldn’t get its tail in because it was huge. It was a decoy in case a coyote was after it. I know other lizards will drop their tails but this tail was almost bigger than the lizard itself.”
Barb smiled and looked up at the stars. “Losing a big chunk of yourself is a part of life, young man. It don’t matter if you’re a lizard or a person. It’s gonna happen and it’s gonna happen a lot. It’s part of life. And sometimes one tail ain’t enough. Take my advice and grow two or three. You just gotta make sure you got enough of yourself left to survive.”
That night I dreamed I was trying to walk but I kept falling down. It was hot and the sun was beating on my head. I was in the desert. I was next to a large wall painted red. I got to my feet and reached for it to steady myself. It was searing hot and burned my hand. I fell again. I got to my feet and took another step. I touched the wall to keep my balance. I pulled my hand away in pain. I took a couple of steps and started to fall. I reached for the wall again but did not touch it. I used all my strength and concentration to keep my balance. I staggered a couple of steps and stopped. I raised my arm and held my hand an inch away from the wall. I took a few more steps and did not fall. I did not touch the wall. I started to walk.
We rolled out of our sleeping bags in the early morning light and, one by one focused on Mr. Lodester standing above us staring at a dark, undulating shape on the horizon. “Everyone in the bus pronto! We’ve got a sand storm coming!”
It hit when we were three quarters up the next pass out of the valley. Bursts of wind and fingers of sand whipped at the windows rolled tight. In a couple of minutes, we were engulfed in a pulsating, throbbing monster. Barb negotiated the hairpin curves hanging over hundred foot drops.
Consuela appeared next to me. “This isn’t good. This isn’t good at all. If we go off the road…“
“We won’t!”, I whispered.
Mr. Lodester stood at the front of the bus with his hand Barb’s shoulder. Sweat dripped down his neck and soaked his shirt as they engaged in a terse back and forth.
“You saw how high up we are.” Consuela’s voice was shaking. “We’re in the middle of nowhere and no body knows we’re here! I can’t hardly see out the window! Why don‘t we stop?”
“We can’t stop moving in a sand storm, not when we're climbing.”, I snapped.
We were blind when Barb somehow managed to make the summit and lock the brakes. Mr. Lodester collapsed into a seat. “It’s OK, kids. We made it. How about a big round of applause for the captain?”
The few of us who hadn’t realized how close we had come to God knows what cheered and clapped. The rest of us barely managed to pry our hands from our seats to offer a listless applause. We hunkered down in the bus as it shook and shuddered.
Consuela gave me a quizzical look. “I thought you said you’ve never been to the desert.”
“I haven’t. Why?”
“Have you ever been in a sand storm?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Then how did you know that the bus couldn’t stop when we were climbing?”
“I don’t know.”
Finally the storm began to lift. We crept slowly along a road we could still hardly see. The wind had at us the whole day as we descended into a broad valley. By mid afternoon we were in tumbleweed territory. Huge, angry balls danced on the shallow slopes above us before barreling down and smacking against the bus. I felt I was living some science fiction movie as giant brown shapes battered the windows inches away from our eyes. When dusk approached, the wind had died down and Mr. Lodester told us we were lucky enough to be able to spend the night indoors.
“Not only that,”, he said. “We’re going to see a show.”
The bus pulled into a small clutch of buildings resembling a run down country motel enveloped by some kind of fog. Consuela pulled my shirt sleeve. “What in the world is in the air?”
I stared out the window. “It looks like dust.”
“You’ve got an answer for everything.”, she smiled.
“Can I have everyone’s attention?”, called Mr. Lodester. “This little slice of Alice In Wonderland is called Death Valley Junction and we are the guests of its queen. Her name is Marta Becket. Let’s go!”
Consuela and I were the first out of the bus. We walked into a silent, gently pulsating cloud of dust so fine, you couldn’t help breathing it in. I could feel electricity in the air. I could feel it in my fingers.
Consuela’s eyes were wide with wonder. “This is amazing!”
I watched her lift her arms, close her eyes and slowly spin around. I was enchanted. “You are amazing.“
She opened her eyes. “What?”
I smiled shyly. “I think you are amazing.”
A frown crossed her face. “What do you mean?”
“I - I really like you.”
“You really like me? What are you saying?” Her mouth dropped in comprehension. “Oh no, no, no. You mean -?” her eyes rolled. She offered a condescending smile. “Bill, you’re a Sophomore, I’m a Junior. It just doesn’t happen.” She let loose a giggle, patted me on the cheek and walked away.
The rest of the kids emptied the bus and walked passed me. I stood in stunned silence. I hardly knew what I had said. I hardly knew I had said it. The magical clouds of dust began to choke me.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. “That’s only one tail, son”, said Barb. "a very small tail. Let’s say you and me go see the show.”
We all filed through a large door of a weathered barn. There were rows of chairs inside lined up at the foot of a raised platform crowned with dark shapes but the dim light kept us from making any sense of it. A lone usher greeted us and sat us in the chairs before walking into the shadows. After a few moments, a spotlight suddenly lit up a piano on the platform. Our usher struck a few cords before launching into a classical furry. One by one, spotlights opened an elaborately set stage. Lights on the walls above us exposed murals of painted balconies brimming with an audience in Renaissance garb gazing down at us. A final spotlight on the ceiling revealed a frozen pastiche of swirling angels and cherubs. The piano pounded to a crescendo and stopped. A curtain moved. A leg in white tights suddenly appeared. A pair of graceful hands crowned with long painted nails slowly pulled the curtain back. A ballerina took a bow. Tchaikovsky rumbled across the piano’s keyboard, the ballerina lifted herself to her toes and for the next hour, a single dancer and a single piano player in the middle of a dust storm in the middle of nowhere transported me to a world I never knew existed, a world that was and had always been inside of me.
That night in my dreams that world opened up to me. My father and the desert were gone. I was no longer alone wandering the countryside looking for plants and insects, trees and birds and lizards. I was painting portraits on the walls of the theater. I was playing Tchaikovsky on the piano. I was dancing with a ballerina. I was no longer alone.
The fog of dust had disappeared with the night as we dragged ourselves in the brilliant morning light onto the bus to face the long ride home. We were quiet, tired from the days of adventures, still absorbing all we had seen. Consuela kept her distance but I didn’t care. I couldn’t help relive the amazing feeling the first time I had seen the desert, how I had been so familiar with and so fond of somewhere I had never been. As its naked beauty slowly faded into the dusty scrublands of the north, I felt I was almost leaving home behind me. But the desert had given something to me that I held close, a new life that would replace the old, a tail that was growing by the minute, a tail that would never leave me.
When the bus pulled up to the school parking lot, night had fallen. I made a determined effort to thank Mr. Lodester. He gave me a cuff on the shoulder and told me he had been impressed with me. I walked over to Barb, shook her hand and thanked her. Her creased face glowed.
I saw my mother across the parking lot and walked to her. She hugged me. She looked drawn and white. Settling my father‘s estate, what little there was of it, had taken its toll.
Her smile was strained. “Did you have a good time? You’ll have to tell me all about it.”
“It was amazing. As soon as I saw the desert, I felt like I was coming home. All through the trip it was all so familiar but I have never even been near the desert.”
A confused look crossed her face. Then she smiled. “Well, I guess you were so little and don‘t remember. And I guess I never said much of anything about it what with the divorce and all, but we moved to the desert when you were six months old. You spent your first three years on the desert when your father was stationed at China Lake in the Mohave.” She smiled as a memory lit up her face. “We lived in a red metal trailer. You learned to walk real fast after you first leaned against it in the middle of the day.”
I could hardly believe what I was hearing. “That was in my dreams one night.”
My mother took my arm as we walked to the car. “So now that the prodigal son has returned to the desert, have you finally decided to become a scientist?”
“No.”
“No? Why not?”
“Something else came to me on the trip.”
“Something else? What?”
“A ballerina.”
