to wit, a middle-aged peripatetic shrink undertakes the Great American Cross-Country Road Trip with help from little leaguers, German bikers, the King of Rock ‘n Roll, porn stars and an abandoned brothel, a flock of domesticated ducks, the Department of Homeland Security and the West Memphis police, a decommissioned atomic warhead, some dodgy motels… and a strange rider in the back of a 2013 Ford Fusion.

The Bonemeister and I made it to Kingman before long and then proceeded on I-40 east. After less than 30 miles we approached the merger with state highway 93-south, which heads toward Wickenburg, more than 100 miles distant. From Wickenburg, roads lead to Phoenix, Tucson, and points toward the border.

We left the interstate and veered onto this secondary route with a spectacular but rapidly fading desert sunset over our shoulders.

I-40 is a major east-west artery. Phoenix is a vast metro area. But oddly that day, Rt 93, connecting the two on a NW-SE axis, seemed wholly deserted as it ran through terrain more vacant than inhabited. Few vehicles could be seen in front or behind. The occasional car passed us going in our direction. Headlights driving toward Kingman intermittently appeared on the horizon and quickly disappeared as tail lights in the rear view mirror. Aside from that, we were essentially alone on Rt 93 as an early moonless nocturne enveloped the countryside.

It was before we reached Wickenburg, in the middle of nowhere, in the inky darkness, that I noticed a beautiful and increasingly rare phenomenon.

With all of the problems facing the 21st century world – global warming, nuclear proliferation, unsustainable deficits – artificial light might not seem too serious. Light pollution is simply the excessive, misdirected, or intrusive presence of human-generated light. But its lack of media attention does not minimize the impact it exerts on the environment and inhabitants.

Light pollution is a side effect of unfettered growth and industrialization. It disrupts ecosystems, especially of nocturnal flora and migratory fauna. It can endanger aviation. It interferes with our intrinsic night vision. It wastes resources (indoor and outdoor excess light in the U.S. is estimated to burn the equivalent of 2M barrels of oil per day). It ruptures circadian rhythms. It is far from harmless. And in reaction, since the early 1980s, a nascent global ‘dark sky’ movement has emerged – one that advocates efficient and judicious use of artificial light – as more people become concerned with the degradation of the natural environment – but seem in most quarters to be fighting a losing battle.

My observations that night commenced with a simple need to answer the call of nature – no rest stops out here. I pulled the car over on gravel by the side of the road next to what appeared to be a large empty field with black woods around. I turned off the engine and headlight, and only then realized just how dark it was.

Granted, the natural atmosphere is never perfectly dark, even in the absence of proximate foci of light. Upper atmospheric radiation produces ionization which can result in a diffuse ‘airglow’ under the right conditions. All phases of the lunar cycle but that of a new moon throw illumination, even when still under the horizon. Studies have shown that artificial emanation, especially when the sky is partially cloudy, can still be detected up to 60 miles from an urban center. All notwithstanding, the contrast with the ‘normal’ industrialized sky to which we’ve all become accustomed, as I stood there in empty rural Arizona that night, was striking. It took a while for my senses to accommodate. I looked overhead and gasped… there was brilliant twinkling from one horizon to the next. Constellations were easily visible that I had seen before only in books. The sky was a velvet drape of pitch on which seemed to sparkle millions of carats of extraterrestrial diamonds.

And the silence was intense. Mesmerized, I remained transfixed for what must have been twenty minutes – that’s a long time to be standing doing nothing in the middle of nowhere. After a while, a soft low humming noise was detected, almost imperceptibly at first. But from where did it come? I had not noticed it before. I then realized that it was the sound of an approaching car… while still a mile(s) distant. Sure enough, a tiny glow then appeared on the horizon, and after waiting longer did a vehicle appear and flash past, only to be swallowed as it rocketed into the opposite darkness.

Then the Stygian night and silence returned.

The observation that I was entirely alone, my surroundings like obsidian, in total silence, with a dead guy in my back seat didn’t dawn on me until much later.

After absorbing as much of this strange otherworldly beauty as I could handle, I returned to the car, fired up the fire-breathing dragon – it seemed now so noisy and bright – and headed south. We still had a way to go before our hotel in Marana.

[to be continued…]

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to wit, a middle-aged peripatetic shrink undertakes the Great American Cross-Country Road Trip with help from little leaguers, German bikers, the King of Rock ‘n Roll, porn stars and an abandoned brothel, a flock of domesticated ducks, the Department of Homeland Security and the West Memphis police, a decommissioned atomic warhead, some dodgy motels… and a strange rider in the back of a 2013 Ford Fusion.

Realizing that we wouldn’t have time to ‘do’ the Strip on this visit, there was no point in staying in one of the A-list casino hotels for what amounted to a quick overnight. Instead, we checked into Sunset Station, an off-Strip complex that is frequented by the locals more than the conventioneers. Though the parking lot is well-lit and safe enough, I didn’t want to lose my back seat relic to a random break-in, so I packed him in a large pool supply box (the only one I had available) and brought him with me upstairs to our room.

You’d be surprised how helpful are strangers when you’re checking into a hotel carrying a large pool supply box. Everyone wants to assist with doors and, several times, hold your box while you enter.

“Bringing your pool supplies to the room, are you?”

[if you only knew]

The next morning, we had to get an early start. There’s so much to see in Vegas – the International Pinball Hall of Fame, the Burlesque Museum, the Liberace Exhibit – but we had a schedule to maintain. Thus, my calcified friend and I fueled up and sailed down Rt 95 past Searchlight NV to the Laughlin Hwy, at which point we veered east toward Bullhead City AZ. After crossing the state line, we took the Mohave Valley Hwy due south through Fort Mohave to the intersection with Rt 153. Again heading east, we snaked our way into the Black Mountains and before long came upon the (mostly) abandoned town of Oatman.

road to Oatman I

road to Oatman II

In 1915, two old prospectors struck what later became a $10M gold vein at almost 3000 feet elevation in these mountains. Soon, a tent city sprang up next to the few pre-existing buildings, and shortly it had all coalesced into a larger permanent settlement. Oatman was born, its name in honor of a 19th century local girl who had been kidnapped by the Yavapai Indians, so goes the tale.

Within a year of those first tents, the population of Oatman had soared to almost 4000. The Oatman Hotel (which predates the tent city, having been built in 1902) later became famous as the site where Clark Gable and Carole Lombard spent their 1939 wedding night after a ceremony in Kingman; they were just too tired to make it all the way back to Los Angeles by car, so they stopped. It’s a rather ramshackle dive, but Gable liked the hotel, and Oatman, so much that he frequently returned to play poker with the miners in the lobby bar when he wasn’t filming. After Lombard’s tragic 1942 death, however, Gable stopped frequenting Oatman as the memories were too painful.

[sidebar: the Oatman Hotel is said to be haunted by the ghost of an Irishman who got drunk and died after falling down the stairs. He’s friendly, the locals say, but Boney-M appeared non-plussed]

Oatman’s significance back in the day is reflected by the fact that the Mother Road was routed through it back in the ‘20s. But when the miners packed up and left during WWII, the town began its slide toward a dusty wide spot on a glorified goat path. The decommissioning of that segment of Rt 66 in 1953 seemed to be the final nail in the settlement’s coffin – by 2000, the census revealed a permanent population in Oatman of only 128.

That is, not counting the burros.

You see, the miners had pack animals in abundance when Oatman was at its height. But it was too much effort to take them along when the mines closed. So they were turned loose, and because of the mild climate and presence of scrub grasses, the creatures thrived. Now they are everywhere in town and the surrounding hills. They stroll down the tiny main street, stopping to rest on the asphalt and gravel. They walk onto the porches of the scattered shops that exist, appearing to window shop. They are hand-fed ‘burro chow,’ available to the tourists, though caution is advised around testy mothers and their young. The burros do whatever they want to do as they are protected by the U.S. Dept of the Interior and cannot be hunted, killed, or harmed in any way.

Shopkeepers, the few who are there, have only one effective way by which to deal with ornery burros – squirt bottles. I witnessed a burro stick its head into a shop’s front door, only to get blasted with water, bray, retreat, and then return five minutes later return to, er, relieve itself on the very same spot. “Take that, jerk shopkeeper!” And we call them dumb animals.

For a so-called ghost town, the place is pretty lively. Though the population hasn’t increased much, Oatman has experienced a renaissance of sorts in recent years, thanks to worldwide interest in Rt 66 (remember those German bikers?) and proximity to gaming in nearby Nevada. Now on any given weekend, one can find motorcycle rallies, old car shows, faux-Wild West shootouts, drinking at the bar of the Oatman Hotel, and of course burros eating burro chow.

tourist and burro (and yes, that’s Rt 66 in background)

Along with the rest of Arizona’s Rt 66 towns, Oatman is fiercely proud of its heritage – the village knows on which side its bread is buttered – and replicas of the Rt 66 black-on-white US highway shield are everywhere, lest you forget. Rt 66 souvenirs also abound. Plus, visitors have taken to pasting autographed-and-dated $1 bills on the walls and ceiling of the hotel’s bar, wedged in-between the Rt 66 memorabilia and pictures of Gable. Estimates of the number of bills run into the thousands.

When in the area, I always enjoy making a pit stop in Oatman and soaking in the ambience. But the dead hombre and I needed to make haste in our journey, as we still had to connect with I-40 at Kingman and reach further points before nightfall.

[to be continued…]

[Have an idea for a post topic? Want to be considered for a guest-author slot? Or better, perhaps you’d like to become a day-sponsor of this blog, and reach thousands of subscribers and Facebook fans? If so, please contact the Alienist at vadocdoc@outlook.com]

[Copyright 2013 @ The Alienist’s Compendium]