Desert Dispatches...

Any landscape is the condition of the spirit. – Henri Frederic Amie Looking around the severely disturbed countryside, the mine foreman sees beauty in the landscape. He is harshly altering and deconstructing it with giant land-moving trucks chewing away at what’s left of several, now indistinguishable, small cinder cones. The “product” is excav...

“Sometimes, when one is moving silently through such an utterly desolate landscape, an overwhelming hallucination can make one feel that oneself, as an individual human being, is slowly being unraveled. The surrounding space is so vast that it becomes increasingly difficult to keep a balanced grip on one's own being. The mind swells out to fill the...

VIDEO & THE RADIO STAR Eric Minh Swenson's documentary on High & Dry premieres today, after this weekend's acclaimed premiere of Christopher Langley's original radio play You Are There: The Water Picnic, performed by Metabolic Studio's IOU Theater in Lone Pine, CA. This 8-minute film outlines High & Dry's long-term collaboration and compares...

It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for. – Lois McMaster Bujold Meeting Henry Jones was a serendipitous event. We were photographing the “throttling” installation in the Trona water system in Poison Canyon when, after several calls from passersby that “some guys were messi...

LMGA Compass Magazine - Cover, Feature Article and "Martini Shot" Compass Magazine's article Osceola Refetoff: The Authentic Character of Things as They Are features Osceola's infrared photo on the cover, as well as the "martini shot" on the last page, referencing the final shot of the day on a film shoot. Click on either image to read the full...

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in. – Robert Frost The people who are born in a place that calls them back are lucky people. For if it is truly home, as Robert Frost assures us, then they have to take you in. For many, Trona is one of those places. But you can only decide to return if you left in the fi...

You just spent a week at Burning Man on a playa in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. You even loved the dust, but now you’re done with the dust. You loved the desert, but you’re done with the heat. You loved not showering as much as you would at home, but you’re tired of your sweat smell. You loved going without sleep but now your body is bone tired...

Sometimes you just look into someone’s eyes and know those are the eyes you want to get lost in for the rest of your life. ― Fad Ibra After a first meeting, you won’t know all the details of a couple’s life together, but you will know with conviction if they have been in love. Joe and Delores Hudson in a few months will celebrate their sixtieth...

High & Dry spent a recent weekend doing immersive field research in Trona, CA, a 100-year-old mining community just south of Death Valley. While that sounds very studious (and it was informative), we enjoyed our work immensely and were given a hearty welcome by the citizens of town, who are determined to stand their ground despite difficult economi...

"Best Outdoor Media Website" "Best Outdoor Feature Photograph" "Best Nature Photograph" "Best Overall Photograph" Los Angeles, Calif. (June 23, 2015) - The Outdoor Writers Association of California (OWAC) honored High & Dry: dispatches from the land of little rain this week at their spring conference in Big Bear Lake in the "Best Outdoor Medi...

The weed-infested fields of West Lancaster, California were once perfect for growing alfalfa. They might still be if it should become economically advantageous again. Complex irrigation systems took care of the desert water needs for the seasonal crops. The fields today show the mottled patches and striated scars of past tilling. These fields are...

The smell of smoke still lingers in areas of downtown as a reminder to local merchants of the emotional and physical healing process still underway following a rash of structure fires months earlier. “It has really devastated Brawley,” American Beauty Academy owner Jeannie Jongeward said. “It’s going to take a long time if Brawley ever will be able...

It seems, in fact, that the more advanced a society is, the greater will be its interest in ruined things, for it will see in them a redemptively sobering reminder of the fragility of its own achievements. Ruins pose a direct challenge to our concern with power and rank, with bustle and fame. They puncture the inflated folly of our exhaustive and f...

It is at best a rather cheerless object, beautiful in a pale, placid way, but the beauty is like that of the mirage, the placidity that of stagnation and death. Charm of color it has, but none of sentiment; mystery, but not romance. Loneliness has its own attraction and it is a deep one; but this is not so much loneliness as abandonment, not a soli...

Palm Springs Life Magazine assigned Christopher Langley to write a feature about the significant beauty that exists around this mysterious, little-known reso urce. Following editorial direction, the story focuses on the history of Lake Cahuilla going back to the Pleistocene, leaving out less savory details about the lake's current condition. The...