Legacy Park, Mojave Air and Space Port

Legacy Park at the Mojave Airport is memento mori. Benches are available for pausing and sitting in life's brief journey to remember those who tried way up in the high atmosphere to touch "the face of God." They fell, like Icarus, because "from dust ... to dust." But grass grows in dust.
Major Premise: "All flesh is as grass."
Minor Premise: Grass has enduring-rock envy.
Conclusion: Rock in grass = skull in hand.

Voyager Restaurant

Mojave Air and Space Port is stark. So is the Voyager Restaurant that sits below the Control Tower. Walls white in the sun, gray in the shade. Windows small and black, mid-sized and black. People walking by on their way in look ordinary, in a surreal landscape. Voyager milkshakes-to-go are better than ordinary.

Mojave

Whoever of this generation seeks a sign, let them go to Mojave at the junction of Highways 58 and 14.

Red Rock State Park

Red Rock State Park is on Highway 14 north of Mojave. Drab rock is mixed with the red. The campground rests among the drab. Campsites are spread out and spacious, although boomboxes can be heard a long way in the dry air. Cars descending the evening highway on their way to LA make a long, hypnotic "headlight falls." Darkening rocks creep up on the camper.

Cross at Walker Pass

Up the hill from Walker Pass is an new rugged cross, the emblem of somebody's suffering. Sister and brother scampered up the granite among the rabbit brush, big sagebrush, and one-seeded pinyon pines. Mother tried to follow them, but stopped, panting. "Come back!" she yelled. "You're killing me!"

Walker Pass

Walker Pass on Highway 178 between Lake Isabella and Highway 14 is the lowest pass in the Sierra Nevada. It's nice, but you can't see all that much in either direction. A pyramid of a hill stands off to the north. A little way up the south slope is a new wooden cross. A really, truly brightly green colored can (for water? for oil? for antifreeze?) lies on the ground. It makes you take your eyes off the mediocre vistas and stare down at your feet.

Woody

Woody is on Highway 155 on the way from Delano to Lake Isabella. Woody consists mostly of the woody remains of the Buzzard's Roost, a restaurant and bar with wooden collapsed bandstand in the rear. The town goes back a long ways, in California terms, to Mr. Woody the Pioneer in the 1860s and Mr. Weringer, mine owner and entrepreneur, who laid out the town in the late 1880s. Signs and remains of signs are all about, signifying impermanence.