I flew to Irvine on March 4 and Lolly and I drove down to Rancho sin Nombre early next morning. My original plan was to spend a month in the desert, but I was happy to settle for 3 weeks. Rancho sin Nombre is the name that was on the gate post when we bought the property in 1984. Originally it had an 8′ X 50′ trailer from the 1950s and a bunk house on 2/12 acres of high desert land in Earthquake Valley. Pat Flanagan moved her trailer from down-the-road where she had been housed for a decade, and we later bought the lot to our west so we had 5 acres. We also added a kitchenette and a bathroom with a chemical toilet to the bunkhouse. This last item has bee a miserable nuisance since installation and is the next item on the agenda for replacement .Lolly had made a huge effort to get the infostructure up and running after some major problems – loss of water (new pipes for well) and replacement of my trailer’s water heater.
Two trailers, mine in foreground
The freeway traffic was shuddersome and I was immediately glad not to have rented a car – my driving days on city freeways are definitely over. It was so lovely to arrive and find everything working and the clear tap water tasted infinitely better, thanks to new pipes. Still lots of things that could be done, but it is livable – if you appreciate funky. A green grassy carpet with emerging goldfields was a lovely sight. As were all the blooming creosotes and barrel cacti. The tall, narrow-leaved cholla that is everywhere on our property has been looking dead for several years. Now you could sit and watch it grow! This was true everywhere, and in Borrego Springs, which is 2000′ lower, the annuals and shrubs were glorious. In the Borrego Valley Indigo Bush was blooming as we had never seen it before – every bush was covered with rich deep-blue flowers, and interspersed with brilliant orange Brittlebush. Brown-eyed Primrose covered the open ground and there was a resulting huge hatch of Sphinx Moth caterpillars. A favorite food of the Swainson’s Hawk, already in full migration in the valley. So we had a veritable feast of hawks and flowers.
Lolly and I walked my favorite local 
oasis next morning and it was green and lush and the cottonwoods and willows were in bud. A fine mist made a gorgeous double rainbow But no birds. With the exception of hordes of Swainson’s Hawks and Turkey Vultures in Borrego Valley there was a noticeable paucity of birds in all my favorite haunts. Lolly left mid-afternoon on Sunday as she still had a week of classes before spring break, and I enjoyed the next two days on my own before Pat Flanagan arrived. I love being alone there and used to do it frequently when I was using it as an escape from Long Beach. But it is something that worries my family and Lolly had ordered the land line reconnected. However the phone man couldn’t come til the following day, so I was without communication with the outside world that night (Well, a cell phone works intermittently outside between the trailer and the pump house if the weather allows). A big rainstorm arrived along with a tremendous wind after I went to bed, and I woke around midnight to fearsome noises as the wind found juicy spots under and around my trailer to propel into music of the wilds. It was totally dark and cold and I lay snug in my down comforter feeling marvelous and thinking how lucky I was to be cozy and warm as the elements outside threw a tantrum. At dawn all was still and the storm could have been a dream except for the puddles on the patio and the snow on the surrounding mountains. 
The phone man came on schedule and there were no other untoward happenings for the rest of my stay!!!
Granite Mountain , the view from the trailers. Snow on top from the big storm.
It was great to see Pat again and we picked up our conversation where it was left off, and didn’t stop. We have been friends since a trip to Baja California in 1978, during which she saved my life. Her trailer sits next mine. Here is Pat in her trailer, and with Heath. Lovely view of Granite Mountain from the windows.
Pat expounding to Heath
And then Alan Harper and Carol Baird arrived, my very good friends and colleagues in Baja conservation activities. I have written a short history of pro esteros elsewhere in this blog, but only mentioned Alan and Carol in passing. They deserve much more. I met them at an Audubon meeting in San Francisco in 1988 when I did a tour of bay areconservation groups to talk about our newly formed NGO. Shortly after I returned home I received a letter saying that an anonymous donor wished to give $5000 to pro esteros. We were thrilled, that was a huge amount of funding for the time. The donation continued for a few years and then I received a letter from Alan admitting he was the donor and he now wanted to “come out”. For the 10 or so years that followed he was increasingly active, and became the 3rd and final president. He later founded a land trust “Terra peninsular” to protect wetlands in Baja California. Here is a photo of him working on our patio. 
Carol was curator at the Berkeley Arboretum when we met, and later formed her own NGO, “CalAlive” to offer teachers professional development courses on doing science in the field with their students. She has now joined the happy league of retirees. 
Carol Baird checking out a Beavertail cactus in bloom
When they left Heath arrived for a week’s stay and Lolly came back down to reune with us for a few days. We decided do a very special day. I had been hearing about Slab City /Salvation Mountain for many years and never visited. It is on the far (east) side of the Salton Sea and a long day’s outing. I had only curiosity driving me, but Lolly was in the midst of organizing a symposium at the Huntington Library called “Fabricated American Desert “ to be held in mid-April, and Heath was to be one of the moderators. A paper was to be presented on Salvation Mountain and neither of them had ever been there! So our unanimous decision was to go next day.
We were off to Borrego Springs early to start the adventure with the Swainson’s Hawk migration. Then up Coyote Canyon to browse among the wildflowers and photograph the Sphinx Moth caterpillars.
Swainson’s Hawk close-up
A ‘kettle’ of Swainsons taking advantage of an updraft, circling upward before heading north through Borrego Canyon.
It is one of the most thrilling bird spectacles one can experience. Every spring thousands of Swainson’s come into the valley for the night and leave in the morning.If there is a sphinx moth hatch they stay awhile to feed on them. Brown-eyed Primrose is a favored hatchery for the moth and this this spring there was a phenomenal bloom.
Then east to Slab City and Salvation Mountain. It was already hot and predicted to be over 90 so by the time we got to Westmoreland we were ready for date shakes, a specialty of the region – mmmmm they were good.
On through the endless ag fields and the mushrooming geo-thermal plants of the Imperial Valley – such a bleak landscape with scarcely a trace of the land it once was, and many would say that was a more than acceptable loss. Salvation Mountain was a total shock, a gaudy and brilliant transformation of a mesa into a tribute to Jesus. It is an impressive instance of ‘Outsider Art’, like Watts Towers in Los Angeles. It is the creation of an outsider named Leonard Knight, who, after his conversion to Christianity (while sitting in his car thinking about something very different), was inspired to do homage to Jesus and eventually (with a lot of life lived vividly in the meantime) turned a desert hillside into a massive sprawl of decorated grottoes and many ingenious painted works in honor of his God. Slab City, up the hill, is an conglomeration of trailers set on slabs that were once the site for military barracks on a now decommissioned army post. It is a community of ‘outsiders’ who are drawn to a very different life from most of us.
A few years back I saw a very good play at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival that was set in Slab City, called ‘Welcome home, Jenny Sutter’. It was about a disabled, discharged young vet who was too disturbed to go home to her two children and found comfort and solace among the like people she met there.
The vision of Knight was fro a 3-building assemblage, but only one more was built. It is a labyrinth of grottoes entirely covered with images, to the right in the photo below. The heat was, by this time, intense, the air was still, and I was reeling with the whole experience. Not the best time of day to visit, even in March, but I think the heat rather enhanced the event. The cool of the grottos was soooo welcome.
Back in Irvine for a day before heading home I was lucky enough to catch a tennis tournament in which Sam (grandson) was playing. He has only been playing for a few years but it is clearly his game, he won all his matches. I did my best with my iPad to take photos through the fence. Once I was lucky enough to get the ball in motion.
And I need to include the brother-sister cat couple in the Massey/Topper household. It is special. Very different personalities, one inquisitive, one retiring and snuggly. Their names are Hawkeye and Pearl. Hawkeye is the people-cat and loves Lolly. He must have a daily snuggle. 
The morning snuggle – Hawkeye, Lolly and coffee.
I had planned to begin work on a book and do some plein air painting and did some of both. But also a lot of reading in a hammock and much, much conversation. It was a most satisfying desert sojourn and so wonderful to see the flowers again. Life just doesn’t get any better.