Nameless

So tired ...

One more look. One more look. One more look. And, so it went as 3:00 approached. Finally, I simply had to walk away.

How did these people do it? Not only was Bodie in its heyday a desert town -- no green, no natural shade, ever, and 70+ degrees in the summer, but the winters were hellacious as well -- with violent snowstorms and low temperatures of -20 degrees. And, that was just the weather.

I was a terrible tourist today, not reading printed material to learn the town's history, not visiting the museum, preferring instead to let Bodie simply happen to me. I understand there's a quote by a young girl which pretty much sums up life this desert town: "Goodbye God, we're going to Bodie." Gives new meaning to the term "godforsaken."

I have an unphotographed but strong visual memory from today. The coach is in the distance and there are several of our group, all be-hatted, strung out singly and in pairs, trudging along the length of what might have been a quarter-mile track through the wavering glare. I don't know why that image is so vivid. On one hand that coach was our rescue, literally our way out. And yet, there was a reluctance to board.

I wonder at the power of the souls left there and at our innate ability to feel their presence. There were many people in Bodie today -- our coach of photographers, families, groups of leather-clad bikers, people driving Hummers and hybrids. What drew them? Likely, not a longing for the really wild west or even dreams of striking it rich in their own lives, in whatever the equivalent for gold might be for them. I wonder.

Could it be that Bodie representative of namelessness? If in our visiting Bodie we acknowledge that someone slept in that tattered bed, that someone hitched a team to that carriage, that someone stumbled to that outhouse, that many someones descended into that mine and others like it, etc, I wonder if we are hoping that someone some years down the line will try to do the same for us.

Could Bodie's draw be its starkness? And, does that starkness in some way reveal to the visitor his or her life -- if he or she allows it? Is Bodie my life stripped bare, back to its essence? Does Bodie, now mute, murmur directly into the visitors heart the unspeakable: the stark (and perhaps in the end the only) truth about our longing to be loved, to be known, to be remembered?

Then, there's our so-human tendency to keep nameless the very people who make us rich ...

Enough. Goodnight.