Here's this year's solstice story. Something to amuse you (I hope) on the longest night. Details have necessarily been changed.
One of the reasons for building the trike was to take the road not taken and see where taking it takes me. So I did. I was somewhere past the end of the English alphabets on a spur of a desert side road, running along a deep ravine or canyon with a captive lake, like a fjord in it. I thought it odd to have so much water so far from a river in desert country, but I suspended my disbelief and enjoyed the ride.
The road itself wasn't much, but the terraced, blocky basalt layers and surprise groves of trees, with their birds and fragrant shade had me stopping often for photographs. With the sun in the right place I thought the landscape would really pop, but it was midday, hot, and not where I wanted to spend the afternoon waiting for an oblique sunset. Ansel Adams did it, but he had a crew. If I could get to the lake though, it might be a fun wait. The problem was that there had been a fence between me and the lake most of the way down this road, and I hadn't seen any gates. I continued on, and after another mile the road swung away from the lake and I was running over the top of the basalt flow.
Then I saw a gate up ahead. It had the usual yada-yada about us government property and sudden death to trespassers. But it was open, and I figured I could plead "public nusience" on them for leaving the gate open. There were signs of recent passage through, coming from the other end of the road. My end was the less travelled. I decided to leave the trike outside and walk to the edge of the terraced basalt to see if there was a way to the lake. It was really hot, and if I got to the shoreline I planned to walk in helmet and all.
It was a few blocks hike to the edge. The road, which showed tracks from both trucks and bikes, switchbacked down a couple of terraces with no real banking, and absolutely no guard rails. The pebbles and sand made the basalt hardpan slippery, and I could see several near misses recorded in the berms. I decided it wasn't worth the risk to the trike, but I went back for my camera, water, and better hot weather walking clothes.
Four terraces down the path was suddenly paved and the grade improved. That seemed out of place, but aside from being hotter, it was easier walking. I'd gone down far enough for my ears to pop, and then, around the umpteenth hairpin, was the lake. It was too far away to get to, on account of I'd also have to get back. I figured 5 miles as the magpie flies. Much longer with the switchbacks. Someone had gone through a lot of trouble to build a really nice road from a dirt track to the lake in the middle of nowhere. I whipped out my 4G tablet and punched in my gps numbers.
There was nothing there, said a search engine, and a satellite earth mapping confirmed empty desert. Zooming in there was no fence, no paved road, -- nothing except basalt desert from the distant interstate on the left, and the eternal river on the right, with this semi-well known lake in between. I felt a bit nervous knowing that. I decided to get closer, but I was more cautious about walking, especially when I could see the lake. It seemed reasonable that whatever was going on that needed a fence, a good road that started out treacherous, and didn't exist on the maps was happening there.
I was glad that I brought water. I went slowly and stopped often to take pictures and sip. The temperature must have been triple digits, and without my canteen and walking clothes I would have cooked. I must have seen 8 different kinds of lizards skittering around, and the prairie chickens ran in coveys. I got some nice stills and flushing pictures of one group that seemed trained for it -- running in and out of the scenes on some silent cue. Under different circumstances I'd have shot a couple for supper. Everyone likes fresh grouse grilled on a desert campfire. As it was, I congratulated myself on leaving the gun on the trike. If this was some Island or lake of Dr No, I was better off being unarmed when caught by the minions.
But chances were that I was just on some agricultural experiment acreage. I hoped so. I was getting hungry, and those grouse, the sage, and other edible flora and fauna had me wanting to find a plot of huge, chilled desert watermelon, maybe near some secret government free-range barbequed prairie chicken ranch. If not that, a good salad ranch would do. It didn't even have to be secret. I wondered if the lake had fish. I'd never heard of any, and my 4G tablet was too far into the ravine for a signal. The lake had a high water mark way up the ravine's terraces, suggesting that the years-long drought had sucked it maybe 50 feet lower than it was used to. That could play badly with the fish.
Halfway through the next hairpin I came on another gate and what was probably once a guardhouse. It was poured concrete and very thick. The roof looked solid, but aside from a lot of tire tracks and footprints there was no sign of human life. It was like walking into a scene from an old iron curtain movie, with the gate on rollers up to the guard house and the drabness of the colors. The only thing missing was people. I took a pic, shoved the gate open, and continued.
Beyond the gate was an open area with a lot of parking and three roads radiating from the central clearing. There were no buildings or other human-made objects except the tracks and footprints I already mentioned. It was impossible to tell how old any were on account of there'd been no rain in a few years and a constant ground wind softened and moved the prints like the tide does to beach sand. Even broken sage had indeterminate timelines to their injuries. One of the roads seemed to have more ground-in dirt than the other two, so I chose the lefter of the two remaining and kept walking.
Another quarter mile and I was on a steep, downhill grade with the wind coming straight at me. Up ahead, in the center of the pavement, a covey of quail wallowed in the dirt berm. They were vigorously dust bathing, and there were nine distinct brown clouds marking their bathtubs. I dug in my camera bag for my long lens and dialed in a sports setting to track them. I looked for an approach that would get me in good range and made for cover.
Then I froze. I wasn't the only one stalking the quail. I first saw one coyote on a crouching sneak through the head-high brush. Then I saw the other one, slightly ahead and in the brush on the other side of the road. They had the wind and slope working for them, and were completely silent on the soft, sandy ground. Both had their heads low and level -- on a sight track for the unsuspecting birds. I stopped trying to get closer. I was downwind of everybody, but I didn't want to disturb the players. I set up behind a rock and began shooting the hunt with my 400mm lens.
The hunters took their time, sneaking a few steps and freezing, first one, then the other. At about 20 yards from the oblivious birds, the one on my side, the right, went off in what I assumed was a maneuver to get downhill of them. I panned ahead of the covey at maximum zoom looking for it, and found it -- backdropped by a white van off in the brush. I marked the van's position and continued tracking the coyote. Sure enough, it crept to the edge of cover and laid down, with just his ears visible over the stubbly undergrowth.
The two coyotes didn't move for several minutes, and I was getting very hot behind my rock, which didn't have a tree for a close friend. I was hoping whatever was going to happen just would so I could move on to investigating the van. So did some soaring buzzards, who swooped lower in their updrafts in anticipation of leftovers.
And then the puffs of dust bath stopped coming up and the quail settled in their wallows for a nap. The downslope coyote moved first, charging the sleepy birds. They scattered on foot for a few feet before the second coyote sprang. She got one in a leaping grab as they flushed, and in their moment of hesitation, the downslope hunter picked another off the ground. The rest made for the safety of the sage and disappeared in a noisy flutter. The hunting team met over the abandoned wallows to compare notes and catches. Satisfied with their efforts, they turned into the brush and disappeared. Dissatisfied with the neatness, the buzzards returned to their higher altitude circles.
I must have gotten 40 frames of the hunt, attack, flight, and aftermath. Pleased with my own efforts I headed on down to the van.
It was gone. I could see tracks where it had been, and where two people had left it and returned. But I was distracted and I'd not seen them or heard anything. Maybe the wind masked the engine noises. Maybe it wasn't really there. But a quick check of the camera said it was there. I considered turning back, but I felt that a view of the lake must be just around the next hairpin -- like I'd been feeling for each turn in the road for the last hour. I went forward more cautiously, looking through the brush for more phantom vans. And around the next bend I found them.
Lots of them. Maybe a dozen. All white. No plates. No markings. Nobody around. Just footprints in what seemed to be random directions. One had a warm engine. The rest were just hot from the sun. I took more pics. I could see a bit of lake and was tempted to climb on a van for a better look when the wind died down and I could hear machinery. Governed engines, not road equipment. I abruptly left the staging area and retreated into the brush. There was a pile of basalt rubble with a snarl of sage up its sides like a linty gumdrop. I put it between me and the clearing and climbed to where I was hidden but could see over the top.
The lake was very blue and the water was very low. A white, crusty dried mud covered the exposed bottom to a good way up the almost sheer basalt ravine. My camera was recording a scene probably never visible to humans. Surprisingly, there was a lot of symmetry to the lines of mud, and the previously hidden bottom contour seemed unnaturally regular -- not laid out in the gentle chaos like random nature prefers.
I set my lens to the long end and surveyed the scene below, trying to remember if I had the big memory chip in the camera and when I last charged the battery. I could see vehicles and tiny people disappearing into the ravine. The road, which ran around as much of it as I could see, ended at some structures at the far left, that at a casual glance seemed like just more muddy rocks. Machinery and vehicles were disappearing into the mud -- er buildings. Upwards of a dozen small boats were making wakes as they headed toward what appeared to be a dock area.
I scoped the rest of the lake, taking close-ups and long shots of the activity. I was too far away to see anything clearly, and the wind was making it hard to hold a steady lens, but I worked it as hard as I could. As I set my viewfinder to the right, I realized this wasn't a bunch of cow farmers swiping water for their cows, or pot farmers with an open-pit marijuana mine -- These were submarine farmers, and this was their submarine pen.
Grounded by the drought on a muddy ridge and unable to refloat before the water receded altogether, the submarine had slipped onto its side and lay like a beached whale a bit to the right of the camouflaged facility. And like whale people throw water on beached whales to hide their hides from the sun, whoever made a submarine in a desert lake had thrown mud all over the sub to hide it from -- well, from everything. If I hadn't been exactly where I was when the sun was just right I'd never have seen it, either.
It looked as though the folks below were engaged in either a stabilization or salvage operation. They were building a scaffold-ish structure through the mud, or maybe from the sub to the beach -- I was going to have to enlarge the photos to be sure. But there was a series of causeways being built and heavy machinery around the submarine, and everything was coated in clingy, monochromatic mud, which was being sprayed constantly on anything shiny by mud coated tank trucks with big nozzles on a turret behind the cab.
I clicked and got dump trucks filled with muddy basalt boulders and cobbles. Loaders, spreaders, people, a dog and some seagulls -- and all headed away from the work areas with spray trucks at the ends of the lines muddying up their tracks. I got details of the sub and the dockish structure being built alongside it on the beach. It was very incomplete and was being worked on in several places at once.
I returned my camera to the left and got overhead pipelines, a power station, and radio towers with cell phone antennae. That's when I decided that powering up the 4G tablet and keying in these GPS coordinates hadn't been a strategically sound event. I was thinking that I was probably the only caller they'd had there at the Skunkworks Ravine Office all day, and that everyone had listened.
But I had an equally bad feeling when it was clear to me that all the activity was headed under cover, and the only things headed the other way -- my way -- was a pair of motorcycles that disappeared to my left, and a trio of Humvees that came straight up my road. And they weren't wasting time. In a few minutes I could see them stop one switchback below me. Two proceeded on. One stopped at the collection of vans, and the other went a switchback up. They knew where I was.
Four uniforms got out of each rig, and one sat in the top turret. They were all looking at the rock I was behind, even though I was well hidden and they'd just got there. I guess not all the buzzards up there were the regular kind. Some were flying cameras. That's why they didn't man the guard house -- they didn't have to. I was outgunned and I knew it. I stood up on the rocks and waved to them.
Before the group in front of me made their ways through the brush (slow, with them working toward me in backup-buddy pairs, each leapfrogging the other -- like the coyotes did), the pair of bike borne berets were at the base of my little stronghold demanding my surrender. I had no problem with that. They looked much more fit than I, and they had a lot of dull, black hardware hanging all over them. Anyone who could haul around that much stuff on a hot day while wearing black below their body armor in that kind of heat without sweating like a beer stein wasn't going to find me much of a challenge. PLUS, they'd come charging through the brush on motorcycles without helmets, and without mussing up their berets. How can you NOT surrender to that?
To end this story:
They had me toss down the camera and bag, and then the rest of them surrounded me. they had no insignia, but some had tell-tales like "semper fi" tattooed on them somewhere. I stayed on the rocks while they quizzed me on my goings-on for the past while. I was scolded for being where I was, warned that I mustn't talk, and then one of them popped the hatch on the camera, pulled the chip, and tossed it back to me. I bobbled it, quickly slipped in the other chip, and snapped a random picture behind my back, with the lens tucked under my arm as I started my scramble down the rocks. They gave me a ride back to the first gate, got the registration of the trike, spent another twenty minutes asking questions about it and looking it over, and sent me on my way.
Here is the picture:
image uploadI'm not allowed to identify the location, but maybe you can. Unfortunately, my sleeve and shirt partially blocked the lens -- much of the fore and backgrounds are missing, and it's a little badly exposed. The horizon and therefore the perspective was a bit crooked, and I cropped to remove sleeves and straighten the horizon. Not bad for a behind-the-back shot though.
Anyway, You get points for reading all they way. Extra points for naming the lake (remember the water is low so the shape has changed some). WAY extra points if you can ID the type of submarine, and even more if you can explain the mystery. I think it is a training facility and a scaled down version of some sub. Maybe it's just a classroom and the beams under it are a support that is supposed to keep it propped up. You tell me.
Wishing you all a happy solstice from the Oleo Ranch
Rodykyll
