In the desert you can remember your name
‘Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.– Not Neil Young
So, it sounds like I’m to make my first trek into the Mojave Desert, to a place near California City. A half-First-Nations man with a Thai wife have given us their permission and blessing to use their 250-acre desert land for two weeks starting Monday. If we can pull it together, it promises to be a fruitful trip. They have a house, a motor home, and a wooden Thai-style bungalow. I get to stay in the latter. If all goes well, this might be a place for the “rainy” season. You laugh… read this:
(From “Mojave Desert – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia“)
Summer weather is dominated by heat — temperatures on valley floors can soar above 120 °F (49 °C) and above 130 °F (54 °C) at the lowest elevations — and the presence of the North American monsoon. Low humidity, high temperatures and low pressure draw in moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, creating thunderstorms across the desert southwest. While the Mojave does not get nearly the amount of rainfall that the Sonoran desert to the east receives, monsoonal moisture will create thunderstorms as far west as California’s Central Valley from mid-June through early September.
The property itself has five ponds and a dozen or so full-size trees. I can’t find it yet on Google maps, but it’s in this area:
35.295029, -117.963295 (plug this into google maps)
It used to be a hunt club, now it’s a refuge for Canada geese and the like (Canada monks, etc…). More on this to come.
Random Quote
The Buddha-dhamma makes little appeal to the masses since it is diametrically opposed to their sensual desire. People do not like even an ordinary sermon, let alone a discourse on Nibbana, if it has no sensual touch. It is acceptable only to those who have practised vipassana or who seek the dhamma on which they can rely for methods of meditation and extinction of defilements.
— Mahasi SayadawFollow
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Yuttadhammo
Sounds great! I had the chance to visit the Mojave desert about 11 years ago. It was wonderful. Excellent place for meditation. I was there in winter, though.
Have a good trip.
First of all…those lyrics are from a song by AMERICA called A Horse With No Name….written by Dewey Bunnell in 1971 (Googled it…just in case there was some Neil Young connection I wasn't aware of!)……good song tho!
And I also Googled the coordinates and found the SPOT in the middle of nowhere…what is that HUGE "racetrack" just south of the location? It looks crazy dry and hot there…hard to believe a monsoon ever touches it…very interesting.
'sfunny…
"Many people thought this was Neil Young when they heard it. It replaced Young's "Heart Of Gold" at #1 in the US."
"The song's resemblance to some of Neil Young's work stirred some grumbling as well. Incidentally, it was "A Horse With No Name" that bumped Young's "Heart Of Gold" out of the #1 slot on the U.S. Pop chart. "I know that virtually everyone, on first hearing, assumed it was Neil," Bunnell says. "I never fully shied away from the fact that I was inspired by him. I think it's in the structure of the song as much as in the tone of his voice. It did hurt a little, because we got some pretty bad backlash. I've always attributed it more to people protecting their own heroes more than attacking me.""
http://www.lyricstime.com/neil-young-horse-with-n…
http://www.lyrics007.com/Neil%20Young%20Lyrics/HO…
http://www.thrasherswheat.org/2005/04/bigfoot-rar…
Why do I remember hearing "Horse With No Name" on the Harvest Album? Very strange.