"my doggie and i are all alone together, under the stars and the flowing milky way, bridging the space between the celestial and the terrestrial on pristine sand dunes with no civilization around for miles and miles...immersion in the eloquence and silence of a remote location in southern california, which is still unexploited, unspoiled, and wild...life is good again" ― bodhinku, immersion
i had a pretty awful week this past week, things piling on top of one and another, unceasing unpeace, creating endless noise in my mind...so when friday came and school was out, i got in my grand cherokee and drove out to the desert. away from people. away from noise. away from everything....i chose these dunes as my haven of exclusiveness...
this location is a remote spot where the marine corps does a bunch of its survival training. turns out after i did a bit of researching, my father was in this location, dropped off by helicopters and left alone for weeks on his own accord. he survived of course, and he will never forget his memories of this place, both good and bad...
when you arrive here, there is nothing around, literally for over 35 miles in every direction. it's not an easy place to find, and even harder to get to. thankfully, the multitude of instagram photographers have not "discovered" this locations yet. and those of us who have experienced these dunes with their solitude and felt their silent love, will not release the location for the ig locusts to exploit, step all over, ruin forever, and move on to their next great unknown spot.
through the years, all the paved roads have been closed permanently. and all the access roads are old rough gravel/dirt tracks that are horribly washed out in numerous spots, and in others, they are treacherously deep sand. the surrounding terrain is unforgiving desert, so if anything goes wrong, survivalism is in order.
my doggie, besos, and i arrived late friday night, and stayed through the afternoon on sunday...we saw no other human beings during out stay. damn, is that cool. so cool, we are going back again this weekend, so as you are reading this, i will be at this spot again, submersed in its exquisite tranquility...
i shot images of sunrise, sunset, and nightscapes under the stars with the milkyway...so surreal, so wonderful...
only issue was that of the coyotes roaming this area. quite a large pack. a big group of at least a dozen, all pretty brave, coming as close to 25ft from me and besos...and two of them were quite brazen, getting with in only a couple feet...besos now hates coyotes, as they kept circling us the one morning, yipping and yapping, seemed like they were trying on purpose to mock and taunt my pup...but as the sun came up, they left us alone, maybe bored with us, or maybe they figured out there was just no food to be had with us...
for three days i hiked, scouted, and roamed all over this place. only going back to my vehicle to eat, and sleep in my nice cozy little car camp...i will say, that these dunes are not the easiest to navigate about on foot at night, with no moon in the extreme darkness, truly a challenge for me, even with my experience in sand dunes at night...but all the same, being in these dunes at night under the solitude of the stars and the milky way was the highlight of my times spent here, such a wonderful experience. invigorating, exciting and rejuvenating...
and when it was time for us to leave, i felt sad, i wish i could have stayed a week, or weeks here...but again, i will be going back...returning this weekend, and many more in the future...places like this now-a-days are are just so rare, so i want to have fun here until the secret gets out and the masses ruin everything like they always do, in search of their money-shots, desiring pictures, instead of the experience, and the spirituality of the place...
this place is so beautiful. and so perfect for me and so representative of what i would love to give the world with my photography: unique locations that are unspoiled, and undocumented....thank you chip morton for cluing me into this place!