Plotting, Scheming

Pictures from various visits to what we affectionately called Dreamland, a twenty-acre parcel of pristine Mojave Desert wilderness P. and I (and Mac and Dolly) fell in love with back in 2009. And again in 2010. And 2011.

And would you know it's back on the market for one fifth of the original asking price. [Insert collective groan from entire immediate and extended family.] Let's discuss.

Flashback to 2009, Joshua Tree. Newlyweds. On more than one occasion I'd call P. as he was leaving work and invite him for dinner at Dreamland, table for two. He'd always say yes because he's a good-natured husband, so I'd put on some lipstick, shut up the studio for the night, load the doglets in the truck and swing by Sam's Pizza for Indian takeout. (Quick aside: Sam's Pizza was and still is a tiny no-frills pizza joint in a tiny strip mall across from the Joshua Tree Post Office run by a lovely Punjabi family. They make terrible pizza and -is it possible?- the best Indian food I've had outside the Subcontinent. If you ever go to Joshua Tree, you must get Indian food at Sam's Pizza.)

We'd  rendezvous at Dreamland and hike to our favorite spot to enjoy dinner in our laps while brainstorming about the off-the-grid cabin and studio we'd build there, the artist residency we'd start, the painting I'd do and the writing he'd do. The topography of the land is shaped like a donut, so that while not far from town it's situated in its own domain and seems completely remote once you're there; it owns its own view. You stand at the bottom of the bowl and a circumference of monzogranite ridges rise up on all sides, with two large mountain ranges flanking the north and south in the distance. At the risk of sounding new age, the energy there is OFF THE HOOK. The place is magic.




Our dates to Dreamland continued throughout the winter sunsets, a freak blizzard, the spring bloom when thousands of hedgehog cactus exploded into fuchsia spectacle and desert indigo, mormon tea, Spanish dagger yuccas, pink barrel cactus, desert broom, and my beloved orange mallow came to vivid life. And then into the punishing Mojave summer, when jackrabbits sought refuge in the cool overhangs of the massive boulders and a breeze kept the property a good ten degrees cooler than in town. Even when we moved to India, we kept our eye on the place as the listing popped up every so often when the price came down.

Let's revisit the facts. It's twenty motherfucking acres of sublimely beautiful, ecologically diverse, topographically unique, pristine desert land. As Pa Stockman likes to say, "Land: they're not making any more of it." And this land is so cheap now that two graduate students could cobble their savings together and DO IT. (And no, there's no catch; we've done all our homework on the place and no, MOTHER, there is no secret nuclear waste dump there or radon in the water table.)

I can't stop thinking about it.  P. can't stop thinking about it. We're having a Marriage Summit this weekend to plot, scheme.

While discussing it with my best friend over hot sake last night in our favorite subterranean hole in the wall behind my studio, she shrugged over a bowl of steaming udon and said, "Well it wouldn't be the craziest thing you guys have ever done. You can park the Scamp there for now until you can afford to build something." CHA-CHING.

You GUYS.