You have to proceed almost by accident. I learned about a motor vehicle this way.

I was crossing the desert. Smooth. Wind rippling at the window. There was no road, only the alkaline plain. There was no reason for me to be steering; I let go of the wheel. There was no reason to sit where I was; I moved to the opposite seat. I stared at the empty driver’s seat. I could see the sheen where I’d sat for years. We continued to move across the desert.

I moved to the back of the vehicle—a large van with windows all around—and sat by the rear doors. I could hear the crushing of earth beneath the wheels. I opened the doors wide and leaned out. I saw the white alkaline surface of the desert slowly emerging from under the sill, as though the van were fixed in space and the earth turning beneath us.

I opened all the doors. The wind blew through.

I stepped out; ran away. When I stopped and turned around the vehicle was moving east. I ran back to it and jumped in. Out the driver’s door; in through the back. I got out again, this time with my bicycle, and rode north furiously until the vehicle was only a speck moving on the horizon behind me. I curved back and crossed slowly in front of it. I could hear the earth crumbling under the crush of my rubber tires and the clicketing of my derailleur gears. I lay the bike down and jogged alongside the vehicle, the padding of my sneakers next to the hiss of the rolling tire. I shifted it into neutral through the open door and turned the key off. I sat in it until it came to rest. I walked back for the bicycle.

Until then I did not understand how easily the vehicle’s tendencies of direction and movement could be abandoned, together with its systems of roads, road signs, and stop lights. By a series of strippings such as this one enters the desert."

Barry Lopez, Desert Notes

The Last Days in a Lonely Place

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