Jesse Chehak

Reflecting

On the San Andreas Fault

In the fall of 2007, on the drive from Los Angeles to a strange land called the Carrizo Plain National Monument, I remembered that this was to be my 2nd visit to a visible section of the San Andreas Fault. I was booking it through a part of Southern California totally new to me, much farther north in a very different landscape. Not surprised but aroused nonetheless, a sense of déjà vu came over me that I later connected to an experience I had during a geology retreat required to all 1997 earth science students, myself one. I took geology to avoid the mathy hard sciences knowing it would be less busy work, more observation, philosophic in nature, but by no means simple. One of the requirements for course completion was participation in a two night, co-ed camp trip exploring the anomalous desert features and phenomenal world of South Eastern California. Late that spring semester, under clean high sun, I was standing on a small bluff near Interstate 5 in Palmdale staring right at and into It. The feeling is specific to a West that is whole, a connectedness where I am a link in a vast expanse of rusted chain mail. The difference this trip was ten years and solo: a married man nearing thirty, one of ideas, mild success, some battle, and an insatiable appetite for exploration. What I know means nothing and this path requires a frustrating try of dusty roads and waning picturesque light before I finally find the trailhead, turn off the car, gather what’s mine, and cover the last ¼ mile on foot. At this remote site, you can easily meandor along and inside the trench where lands collide, like a line in pencil that is erased, leaving behind a moldable impression. Or even better, it is like a wrinkle. In this place the air is chilled and while the familiar ringing of my eardrums slows to nothing, the silence grows eerie and raw. It is holding on as long as you can until the pull is too much, so you let go only enough to preserve your integrity and continue enduring, imagining all the time what a total release might be. I work well here: humbled to nothing and in there, one on one between actions.

Permalink / 22 May. '08