#RSRSeesTheUSA Days 45-46: Eastern Sierras & Death Valley, CA
Back to wifi territory from boondocking in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains last night. Which looked like this.
Here’s what I wrote last night, all snuggled into the back of Stella.
I’ve officially turned Eastward and bid the Pacific Ocean farewell this morning with coffee and pastries and catching up with Tim Svenonius. I’m happy to be leaving the city behind for the next week and heading out to the desert and mountains again. I’m feeling sad to shift phases of this trip to one that’s promising fewer friends to see. And I’m excited to be on my own in nature again.
I’m writing this camped out in the back of Stella on land managed by the Bureau of Land Management on a hill overlooking the Sierras and Lake Mono. It’s delicious and cozy and beautiful. It’s also coming on the heels of driving aimlessly away from people without a set goal (I only stopped here when the sun was starting to set and because it was near where I happened to find myself), which felt lonely and placeless and quiet and brave.
I’m trying to stay attuned to my inter- and intrapersonal energy, which feels like it needs more buffer time these days whenever I shift dynamics: before seeing people and after, heading into socializing and away. The shifts between alone time and time in company are asking more from me than they used to. Maybe it’s pandemic related, and maybe it’s just me paying better attention to what I need. Probably both.
After writing that, I spent a largely sleepless night with the car rocked by wind gusts and my mind incessantly worrying about the oncoming winter storm warning scheduled to begin early in the morning. Spoiler alert: while there was indeed some flurrying snow on my drive out of the mountains, it didn’t keep me from driving. Just kept me from sleeping, because anxiety spirals will do that.
After getting down out of the weather advisory territory, I accomplished a very particular and deeply Rachel pilgrimage, which was a stop by the joshua tree that starred on the U2 album cover of the same name. (I’m a bigtime U2 fan from way way back.) The tree fell in the early 2000s, but is a site fans still head to and leave offerings. I had no offering to leave, but instead here’s a selfie with my U2-inspired tattoo of a bed inside a lightbulb (your love was a lightbulb hanging over my bed).
Thanks to some minor car drama (the unglamorous reality of road tripping), my Death Valley trip was confined to driving through the area on my way to Cancùn… Resort in Las Vegas. I swore to myself I’d avoid Las Vegas on this trip. I’ve been there before. It’s a trip, and also it’s so many of the things that are wrong with the USA. But the closest Subaru dealer is here, and so I am, too… in a hotel room with two bathrooms and a faux pyramid in the pool that cost me less than $100 for the night. Vegas… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Cloud of the day: tie between two soft smudges in blue sky, one a tiny singular streak over the U2 tree, and the other a pile of layered streaks near the horizon line along the Death Valley highway
