Guided By Moonlight

The road curves in and up around the sloping foothills of the lower desert as I accelerated into the ascent, on my way home. Beside the road, small dry chaparral is throwing long shadows onto the beige prairie grass. Long blue shadows in the white night twilight. On either side of the valley, where the highway trickles, there are tall black mountains stretching for miles, east to west like the backs of dragons.

The stars are high above, and through the television style windshield of my truck, I can see what’s visible of the night’s sky. Obstructing my total view of the heavens is the grey felt liner of the crew-cab. Beyond the cab is the beautiful starry sky of the uninhibited desert, unreserved by lamp cast city light. I stick my head out the window and look up into the warm summer breeze and see the haze of the Milky Way cutting through the crystal clarity of the universe.

I have the windows rolled down, and the A/C off. The music is on, but it’s low, and the mellow whaling of old folk music comes at me from the small speakers in the grey interior doors. Earlier, I noticed that my headlights hid the bright blue hue of the moon, which cast down light upon the desert floor. So, in order to see better I turned them off. Even the dash lights have been extinguished for this forlorn back country ride.

I feel that it is better this way. There is something far more natural about running at full speed in the dark with headlights off and the radio volume down, and digging what is all around. Too many times people get caught in the destination, and the trip goes to shit. That is my main problem with headlights, they only allow you to see in tunnel vision on the road, everything to left and right (and above) are blocked from view – out of mind – and it makes it easier to drone on into the darkness, steadily unnoticing… missing everything.

I come to a stop sign at the T, where all the CHP stop and turn around, and see an owl sitting on a lone pine near the edge of the opposite lane, silhouetted against the bright night canopy. I watch him silently for a moment, and since there are no cars on the road, ahead or behind me, the moment turns into long minutes, that seem to stretch on for hours.

The owl was perched at the very top of the tree, where it seemed that there was no tree at all, but simply a needle point. The owl sat on that needle point, head turned, looking down at me, and around me, for mice and other rodents. It was a Great Horned Owl, and I could see the horns, black, lit against the moonish glow.

Glancing away from the owl for only a second I saw the essence of a small creek winding along with the oaks and cottonwoods down a narrow valley, and disappearing behind a ridge, and continuing beyond it, at the end of a small grass prairie. And when I looked back for the owl, it was gone. The hunt is over, I thought, something is dying now, or being eaten alive.

I continue on up the road towards the solitary cabin where I live, and in winding roads rats and squirrels run their little suicide routes across blind curves, and snakes slither along the asphalt just out of reach of the tires. A few hawks swooped down at prey in the perceivable distance. All of them silhouettes. All of them with shadows long and blue.

I stopped to look at some of them. Sitting in the road, engine off, docile, observing the animals observing me – ignoring me… killing around me. Under the sky and overlooking where from I had come, I found a four-foot long rattlesnake, and for an instant I contemplated killing it. I had a machete in the truck, and a long stick to hold its head down, before I hacked it off brutishly alongside the highway for all who cared to see, to see… but the notion passed quickly, this was his turf and I had no business killing the old man rattler, anyway. There were provisions at home.

I continue on, the headlights off, at 80 mph – smoking a cigarette I light from a pack of 72’s in my green plaid shirt pocket – kicking up some rock as I skidded off. I took a slug from a beer I kept between my legs. It’s cool and clean tasting, Budweiser. The turn got sharper for a moment as I picked up speed and careened, barely in the yellow lines, up the road to the plateau before the long straight drop, where on good days you can get up to 125 mph’s before you have to pull it back and slow down for the long barrel curve that takes you screaming into Oak Grove.

This is normal. I’m a local after all, and obligated to drive these roads aggressively in order to test them for deficiencies and tender corners… they have a few, but nothing I can’t handle as I navigate skillfully in the light of full moons. Out-of-towners always have problems, though. They can never handle the roughage, the tight corners, the gravel, the weaves and winds, the ups and downs, the speed and the G’s.

These outdoor novices wreck their fancy sports cars driving too fast on roads they don’t know at all, on their way to lose all their swindled Wall-Street dollars in Indian Casinos. Burying these opulent jackasses in the sandy Anza Borrego Desert, with its talus slopes and badlands of Carrizo, is a widely accepted solution to problem to us desert folk. And the local Sherriff doesn’t seem to mind either, it is better to see them lost and dead, than to have to scrape their mangled bodies off the 79 at mid-night in the haunting October moon.

They make it hard for the locals who all get more tickets for speeding and driving drunk when the cities strangers make fatal mistakes on these treacherous roads at high speed and under the influence. I myself have been stopped and harassed because of these buffoons driving like mad dogs in heat. Their inability to handle themselves gets the attention of law makers and church groups alike, and then they call CHP to action. Then the CHP, for lack of anything better to do, obliges and runs around half crazy on caffeine and adrenaline, pulling-over everyone and shining their heavy handled flashlights into the eyes of weary travelers coming home. Even if they are tall linebacker types wearing green plaid shirts, blue jeans, and fatigue style trucker hats that say things like, “WE KILL SUCKERS.”

But I always drive safely, watching for them cautiously in my rearview mirror and through the windshield ahead of me. I can see them far off by their headlights, and always I adjust my driving style to suit them. However, on occasion I still get pulled over, despite my best attempts at innocuousness. It is a well understood fact, that when riled up these brutes don’t hesitate to ticket, even without proper provocation. Usually though I get away from these loathsome encounters with only a stern warning, minor background check, and official questionnaire that is typically hosted by both officers using ‘double-talk’ as an interrogative technique.

CHP 1: “Do you have any guns with you?”

ME: “No.”

CHP 2: “Do you have any guns with you?”

ME: “No.”

CHP 1: “Are those dogs vicious?”

ME: “No.”

CHP 2: “Are those dogs vicious?”

ME: “No.”

… and so on…

Up and around the deep curve now, where just last week there was a head on collision that killed a motorist and his dog. Where the bar-restaurant sits stoically bound to the sand in moonlit silence under the closure of dusk. Not even a lamp is on at this time of night.

The truck is humming up the small rise and around a few more curves until I reach the general Store and pass it, and then the Mexican Restaurant and pass it…home is only a minute away… and as I see the driveway I make the hard turn right past the black mail-box, and feel the back of the heavy truck swing, slipping in the gravel, and fishtailing left.

I am on my road now kicking up dust and debris, left over from the high Santa Anna winds that howled through here for most of the week… and on through the first gate, and then the second without slowing down, hit the dip and jump…






…land, and continue on up the small hill, making the sharp left onto the cement, don’t slide this time, but glide in easily and stop, ten-feet from the front door. I get out, close the door, and take a drink from the tall-can I had between my legs, but had forgotten about miles ago with the last slug. It’s still cold, despite the warmth cast off by my legs, gripped tight around the aluminum cylinder.


By: Dillon Mullenix