Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: The American Desert

And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

- Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas

God is dropping cherry bombs in the fire of my heart.

I'm American but I've never seen a land like this before. However, this desert is a part of me.  I know it.  It's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  It's the stories I read about Sonora with my Taiwanese kids in our American textbook halfway across the world.  It's the Native American heartbreak and triumph tales I grew up hearing.

In the long stretches of drive, it's a vast expanse of bone dry, sun cracked  terrain like skeletons left out to bleach in unrelenting sun, covered with a coat of dust.  My skin feels raw and my soul is on fire.  The land here appears dead but discover shade and stillness, and suddenly the desert is teeming with life.  There's movement everywhere.  A flourish of life where thriving dust dances and critters creep and flutter, leap and burrow amidst the shrubs and cactuses. 

We drive ten miles out of the way to get gas, nervously watching the blinking out-of-gas signal, hoping we'll make it.  Being stranded here would be the epitome of feeling destitute.  But- we find ourselves on a reservation where a rich and profound history, marked by tears and cries of sorrow, hangs inert in dusty air.

Is it a mirage? Elders talk in whispers in the dark shadows of the creaking town. Kids with deeply tanned skin and long, stringy, black hair float around on rusty bikes.  They seem unaffected by the powerful rays that suck my skin dry and coat it in a red sting. Where does their strength come from to be able to survive here? Maybe destitute isn't the right word, resilient seems to be a better fit.

"This is What it Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona": Read it.