Magic Under the Spirit Mountains

Article by Kitrick Nielson

The screen glowing in hand shows us directly north of the intersection of Nevada, California, and Arizona. The winter sun steps across midday. To it, my pickup truck is a red speck that sputters and winds the dirt road along the eastern slope of the Spirit Mountains. This morning face erodes down to water and, for now, waits. Today’s people don’t allow granite rubble much progress toward the Pacific. Davis Dam slowing the Colorado River to a standing pool is only a momentary pause in the life of a mountain. Some day the mountain will continue the progress it has known since before people first arrived here and labelled it sacred.

Often in this valley-range landscape of the Mojave Desert, earth unfolds a view tens of miles in any direction, rising up rocky slopes to crack open blue at jagged skylines. With an 11-foot dinghy across the bed, our truck bumbles down the trail that finds a wash and ends at the gritty pink beach of Telephone Cove. A sprinkling of whitecaps out on the open lake suggest excellent conditions. It has been too long since we took out my wife’s favorite little wooden boat. Even the sun and wind today are welcoming.