patrickjegan

March 8, 2016

There’s Something In My Eye

“There’s a lion in the road, there’s a demon escaped, There’s a million dreams gone, there’s a landscape being raped…” –Bob Dylan “Where Are You Tonight?” Well, here I am, driving through the most jaw-dropping awesome landscapes that I have yet to encounter in the Lower 48 States. It’s always dusty here in the Southwestern…

March 1, 2016

A Night At The Opera

I sat in the Amargosa Opera House. Half the seats were filled with ticket holders. I looked around at the fantastic murals, I moved one seat away from the heat of the pot-belly stove and I watched the red curtain. It was 7:05 pm on Saturday night. There would not be an opera here tonight,…

February 28, 2016

The Road To Zzyzx And Down The Boulevard Of Dreams

I wrote a version of this post several days ago, before I went to this Place of Healing, before I walked along the Boulevard of Dreams. After the visit, I deleted most of what I had written…and began again. Yes, I began again when I made the right turn off I-15 and took the…

February 23, 2016

The Snow Moon Over The Mojave

Last night the Snow Moon rose over the Coxcomb Mountains of the Mojave Desert. It’s the fifth full moon we have watched since our journey began There will be one more to witness before we are home again. Will we see the Warm Moon from where ever we will be in the third week of…

February 22, 2016

The Existential Questions Of A Cactus

One afternoon in a desert full of Joshua trees… A vulture makes lazy circles in the warm air, riding the thermals and keeping an eye on the slow-moving Bighorn sheep, hoping in his vulture heart that the animal was sick and would soon die in the maze of weathered rocks far below A rattlesnake moved…

February 20, 2016

Room # 8

There was an old man, kind and wise with age And he read me just like a book and he never missed a page And I loved him like my father and I loved him like my friend And, I knew his time would shortly come but I did not know just when… –Gram Parsons…

February 16, 2016

The End Of The Line

Like, wow…I can’t believe we’re in California. What a magical and special state this is. It’s no wonder that all the famous people live here. It’s the “land of opportunity”, where an anybody like me can become a somebody like…George Clooney. We weren’t here an hour when I drove to a service station to get…

February 14, 2016

Unfortunate Souls

One afternoon, in the late 19th Century, the fifteen year old brother of Maria Moreno complained about the way she was dancing. She got angry. His response was to say: “So, shoot me.” Maria, who was sixteen went into her house and brought her father’s rifle. She shot and killed her brother. He should have…

February 10, 2016

The Big Empty: Where Nothing Is Everything

If you have a mind to go someplace where you can think without distraction, pray without a preacher, sin without a society to judge, see the night sky in its true black star-filled glory, see a snake, an ant, a spider or a bird…then come to The Big Empty. One thing you may not see,…

February 8, 2016

Reality Check: 66% Of The Road Trip Is Behind Us

[Organ Pipe Cactus] We are roughly two-thirds of the way through our long and event-filled road trip. As I write this, I’m sitting in a Starbucks, about 263 dusty, windy and empty miles from Tucson. According to my four weather apps on my iPhone, it’s going to be nearly 80 F today. We need warmth.…