Desperation can be something to fear. Not only the actions that one's own desperation may bring about, but also the unpredictable behaviors of the desperate around you. I spent last night in Bombay Beach on the Salton Sea: home to heroin addicts, meth heads, squatters, lots of dead fish, broken homes (physically and perhaps in a familial sense too), and who knows what else. To clarify, I spent the night there, but I did not sleep.
Friends with whom I had dinner advised against my passing the wee hours there. My initial goal was to arrive prior to the sunrise, so I could get some long-exposure shots of the breaking dawn on the hypersaline stagnant body of water. However, on my trip south, I found that the moon had risen and nicely illuminated the stark desert around me. Also, I had already achieved my other photographic objectives (dinosaurs from Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, statue of Sonny Bono) for the leg of the trip and I was too tired to drive. So I went to the Salton Sea.
Bombay Beach is a small town (?) on the east side of the sea that, among other charming qualities, has a collection of deteriorated housing and trash partially buried by the sand of the sea. The water level has since fallen, but the properties are well past any redeeming value. It is also known for methamphetamine usage, dealing, production, and so on. It was a bit nerve-wracking driving through the community in the dark, and there were many structures that would've looked great in night photos, but I didn't want to start shooting only to find that somebody was living there. Dogs barked on occasion and the train passed every 20-30 minutes, but besides that, the only noise came from the waterfowl.
I parked on the sand, under a moderately effective streetlamp, and sat for a while, wondering if this was going to be a good idea or not. I eventually got enough guts to go for it and grabbed my camera, a tripod, and the biggest knife I had (~11" dive knife)...just in case. I shot for a while, quite happy with the results, and at some point decided that I felt safer being awake and outside with a knife than sleeping in my car at the same site. Somewhere around 5 am, members of the community left for work and I paused each time I heard a car start or door shut, in case they were running in my direction. I didn't talk to anybody there for good reason.
That's pretty much the story. The reason why I'm running on 30 minutes of sleep. The Salton Sea region is a different world. To live in a town where everyone lived in broken-down mobile homes or shacks is foreign to me. I met a couple very nice, unique gentlemen later that day, but that's a different story for a different time. So, you'll have to either wait for the photos or the next post.
[Written in a Target Starbucks while charging my camera battery and laptop, but sent from a Starbucks I found across the street)
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