Kingman to Barstow: Dark Night Of The Soul

“Yeah one thing about this wild, wild country
It takes a strong, strong
It breaks a strong, strong mind
And anything less, anything less
Makes me feel like I'm wasting my time”

                            - Drover, Bill Callahan

If you’ll recall, I tried and failed to get coffee at the McD’s in the Kingman Walmart, and paused to take a shot of the vintage cop car parked in the lot.  My first mistake was not taking the time to make myself a big cup of coffee.  Actually, my first mistake was not taking time to rest more, never mind the no-camping signs.  But I had 205 miles to drive to Barstow, I knew I wouldn’t be going very fast, and I needed to get going while the cool of night lasted.  So I struck out into the moonlit desert night, leaving Kingman around 12:30am.

At first it was ok.  The wide desert of western Arizona was open and flat around me, the waxing moon a bulbous lump that gave quite a lot of light.  I made good time to Needles, the air coming in the window pleasantly cool without being the least bit cold.  I was back in California at last, my home state, and only about 500 miles to go to home.  And then the road began to climb.  The moon was touching the hills with a pale light and a slice of sky I could see out my side window was flung with stars.  The climb continued, and I let Goose take it at about 45.  But it didn’t end.  There was no break, no level spot, no downhill section to relieve that steady climb.  It went on and on.  Just when it seemed it must surely end, it didn’t.  A truck lane opened up on the right, and I got into it.  The climb continued, without the slightest dip or pause.  I let Goose down to 40, then 35.  Trucks passed me, not going very fast themselves, but still rumbling past me.  The moon was dipping lower and lower, getting to be a deeper yellow with every passing minute, until at last it looked like very old parchment with a light shining through it, a deep, smoky amber.  The climb continued, and my eyes were getting bleary, light from oncoming traffic striking the windshield hit streaks I hadn’t cleaned off very well at the last stop and left prismatic blooms on my field of vision.  Light from the reflectors on the roadway made feathery spikes rising up from the road like mist.  I blinked and rubbed my eyes, but it didn’t help.

The climb went on, and I began to feel like I was in a bad dream.  The shoulders of the mountains rose around us, only dimly visible in the light of the lowering moon.  The landscape was felt more than seen, and it felt wild and terribly lonely and inhospitable.  This was South Pass, a long, difficult climb to an elevation of 2,630 feet, which seemed far too low for that terrible climb.  It was because I was taking it so slow that it seemed to take so long, and because I had quickly run through my reserves of energy and wakefulness.  I had not gotten sufficient rest to tackle this long drive in the dark, but it was too late to reconsider now.  I had passed my last stopping opportunities, and even if I had stopped to rest, I would only have had to deal with the crushing heat when day came (the daytime temperature at Needles was around 106).  And so I drove on.

The climb finally ended, and at first it was a great relief.   The road angled down into the Ward Valley, but I only know the name because I’ve since looked it up.  In the moment I simply knew that the awful climb had ended.  But another kind of torture was beginning, because now my eyes were refusing to focus very well, and I desperately wanted to lay my head down and sleep.  There was no stopping place.  There was an exit sign for Water Road, but it was just another hopeless path into an empty wilderness.  There was no sign of human habitation but the road, and my only company was the sinking moon and the trucks thundering by.  The road began to climb again, this time to the Mountain Springs Summit at 2,770 feet.  This climb wasn’t so bad, since most of the elevation had been retained from the original climb, but there was another truck lane on the right and I got into it.

I saw the sign for Highway 66 and Amboy and Palm Springs.  I’ve been to Amboy, a ghost town relic from the days when the original Route 66 was the major route crossing the Mojave.  It has a place called Roy’s Café which is a must see if you are at all interested in this area, a living relic from the time before Highway 40 took over and diverted most of the traffic.  But Amboy was not on my route, and would offer no comfort now anyway, so late at night, and thinking of it, itself a lonely, desolate place, only made me feel lonelier.  The big rigs became fewer, the road curved among dark hills, and at last the moon gave up and slipped down behind the brow of the mountain, looking for a short while like a funny old man with a cone shaped head just peeking over the edge of the hill.  Then it was gone and I was alone.  The darkness pressed in, the road winding ahead narrowly in my headlights.  I so desperately wanted to stop.

I saw a sign for a rest stop some miles ahead.  That was it.  My salvation!  I didn’t care if I wasn’t done with the trek across the Mojave.  I absolutely had to close my eyes.  Now I had a hope of doing that, I just had to make it some 20 or so miles until that point.  I hung on grimly, through a dreamlike landscape that had become surreal and endless, without a single light or building or any other human presence in the lengthening gaps between thundering trucks.  Finally there was a sign that the rest stop was just a mile ahead.  I slowed and took the ramp, anticipation of relief giving me a moment of wakefulness.  I took the fork for cars, not trucks.  The truck side seemed full up.  I couldn’t swear that every spot was taken, but it seemed so.  And now I was rolling slowly through the car side, looking for anywhere I could stop.  There might have been a place I could have wedged in, but I kept rolling in search of a legitimate spot.  And then I was at the exit which led back onto the highway and there was no way to loop back around, no way to try for another chance, I was back on the highway before I even knew exactly what had happened, passing one last van that had squeezed itself into a slim space along the exit ramp because there was no other room.

It was like a terrible, cruel joke.  I had been promising myself sleep if only I could make it a few more miles.  To be denied like that was the worst kind of cruelty.  I could have wept, but it wouldn’t have helped, so I kept driving.  Shapes darted across the road, shapes I felt fairly certain weren’t there.  Things loomed up by the side of the road that probably weren’t there either.  I took deep breaths and bit my lip hard to try and wake myself, I took sips of a cold drink I had, but nothing really helped much.

I have tried, in my driving career, to not drive under such conditions, and I’ve been fairly successful.  There have only been one or two other times when I was nearly this tired and yet kept driving for any length of time.  But this was the worst.  There wasn’t any place to pull over, not even a wide spot in the road.  I had to keep going, and so I did.  When I saw another sign for a rest stop, my spirits lifted.  This time for sure, I thought to myself.

I exited at the ramp and very slowly pulled through, but it was the same all over again.  No room at the inn.  Again, I might have found a little spot if I’d been in better shape, sharper and able to make quicker decisions, but once again there was no second chance and no real room for me.  I wasn’t the only one desperate for sleep and rest, it seemed.  Big rigs were stacked up and jammed into whatever room was available, even on the ramp, and the car side had no space big enough for me with the trailer.  For the second time I was being shunted back onto the road.

But this time, something different happened.  I got angry.  What the fuck?  How was this fair?  Why weren’t there more spaces, and why hadn’t those thoughtless bastards left enough room for me by aligning themselves together a little better?  I was filled with a towering rage, and with that rage came a fresh wave of energy.  Suddenly I wasn’t sleepy anymore, I was very pissed off.  I sped up, pushing Goose up toward 55 from the 40 and 45 I’d been going.  Fine!  Just fine!  I was going to go all the way to Barstow, and then, fuck all, I was going to sleep.

The pain abated some, my vision cleared, I saw no more mysterious shapes in the dark.  Before much longer the road had descended out of the mountains (the Piute Mountains it seems, and may I never drive through them in the dark again).  To my right a cool white light appeared in the sky.  I wondered if it was the lights of a town over the ridge, but when the light kept growing and began to take on a rosy tint, I knew it was the dawn coming.  I felt I was racing the coming day, because when the sun came up, if I was still in the desert, I’d have no chance to sleep.  I pushed on, and at last saw the lights of a town ahead, the remaining curves of the foothills becoming clearer in the growing light.  I made better time, and at last I was entering Barstow, and the GPS was telling me to take the exit, and I was pulling in to the TA I’d selected months ago as my stopping point.  Ample parking spaces greeted me, and I pulled in at the end of a row, and shut off the engine.  Morning had come, the first yellow light of the sun just moments away from cresting the top of the horizon.  It was just after 5:00am.  Could I have been driving for five hours?

I hurriedly took what I needed into the trailer, closed and locked the door behind me, drew the curtains and put things back together from where they’d been tossed about from the bouncing of the road, kicked off my shoes, and lay down.  I could have wished for a little more seclusion, and even more, a few hours of darkness.  But I closed my eyes at last and slept.