Cynthia Tyler.com

The setting for Finding Polaris combines two themes that intrigue me: the modern day ghost town and environmental threats to the Mojave Desert around Joshua Tree National Park. People often see ugliness in the desert landscape. They see a hot, dry, bleak flatland where nothing grows and everything looks dead.

But if you pay close attention, you’ll find a unique and fragile ecosystem of rugged trees and foliage, of animals and insects that have evolved to adapt to the harsh environment, as well as magnificent boulder formations and endless blue sky. I love listening to the desert. Perhaps because I grew up in the city, I long for the sound of complete silence interspersed with the call of the quail or the wind rushing through the trees. It’s a sacred place for me.

I first became interested in Joshua Tree when I began reading about the life of Gram Parsons, who died of a drug overdose at the Joshua Tree Inn in 1973. Parsons was an interesting character. Born to a wealthy Southern family, he was a Harvard drop-out who had a great love for country music. I don’t mean the Stepford Cowboy Country music as seen on CMT, but roots country, a style of music that had been completely rejected by the youth culture he grew up in during the 1960s. Along with Emmylou Harris, Bob Dylan, Neil Young and others, these musicians brought together two facets of a society that looked quite suspiciously at one another at the time: anti-war, rock-and-roll-loving baby boomers and Southern country music fans. These artists proved that people could be eclectic in their tastes, and that we might focus less on labels and more on the quality of the music. I think this applies to the ways we view any kind of art. I like the idea of blurring borders, of trying to do things a bit differently, of experiencing old things in new ways.

So I went to Joshua Tree in search of what drew Parsons there over and over again. And I found it. The phrase “getting away from it all” doesn’t do justice to the experience. It’s probably the closet thing to being on another planet you can have without blasting off in a rocket ship. I’ve read that Parsons and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones used to pile into a convertible limo and make the two hour journey from L.A. to the Mojave, spending an acid-fueled night out under the stars looking for UFOs. Little green men don’t interest me much--I think our own planet’s nighttime desert sky is as remarkable as anything that might lurk in outer space. And there's the added benefit that it can be enjoyed completely sober.

What I didn’t know when I first traveled to Joshua Tree was that just over the park border sat the remains of a town frozen in time. Who can’t resist the allure of a modern day ghost town? With the world changing so rapidly, with so many of the things we’ve come to count on vanishing in front of our eyes--our workplaces, the way we communicate with each other, the way we experience art, music and now, books--given this rapid acceleration of change it’s fascinating to go back and examine a place that remains stuck in time. And we are invited to rediscover a forgotten piece of ourselves there.

I was particularly intrigued by Eagle Mountain because of its history as a “company town.” Imagine living in a home owned by your employer, shopping for groceries in a store owned by your employer, having the company bus roll up to your door to pick you up every morning just to make sure you’re never late for work. It gives true meaning to the old Tennessee Ernie Ford tune, 16 Tons. I sometimes fear we’re headed in the same direction these days, as American workers lose more and more of their power.

I hope that Eagle Mountain remains preserved for future generations to see and learn from. But the fight to protect the desert environment isn't over. Many people still see the desert as having the potential to be a huge garbage dump, and some voices are still calling for the area to be used as a landfill. I hope this never happens and that those of us who love the desert remain vigilant in our efforts to protect her.









Photo and text Copyright 2011 by Cynthia Tyler. All rights reserved.