The Go-Between

"It's a dry heat" lied a man to me while he watched me pluck my sweat wettened tank from my body as my car filled up with gas. In the town of Baker, which starts the long sprawl of desert between California & Nevada, there is something for every make and model that passes through. Free coffee at the magnificent yet malapropos Greek restaurant for the drowsy truckers, alien branded jerky & amusements for the extraterrestrial enthusiasts & a 50' tall thermometer that has been broken for several years & rests at 98°; which is accurate for most days. There was something in Baker for me, too. But I had the damndest time finding it.

3 or 4 times I drove the 2 miles between the exits that connected Baker to the I-15 searching for it. I finally succumbed to the mission, parked my car, bought some jerky & asked the cashier where Amundsen was. He hadn't heard of him. I walked through the parking lots (which were dirt squares that had been divided up by the sharp end of a stick) & asked each person I came across where Amundsen was. The man outside the fire station just answered my question with "Hot enough for ya?". The cashier in the diner sincerely wanted to help but didn't know what to make of my inquiry. The woman working the gas station was surly & disappointed in the interruption. No one had heard of Amundsen & the tumbleweed mode of the town suggested I had run out of population to ask. There is an abandoned building across the street or next door to every sign that reads "open" & not one of them created a shadow to rest below. Except behind the gas station where I found a stump in the shadow of the thermometer & rested against it while the heat set in some more.

3 years prior to this I was working at the South Pole research base which was named after Amundsen, who was the explorer that had first made the trek to the bottom of the world. I was now here, in a different type of desert on a goose chase looking for a statue that apparently didn't exist. A statue I somehow felt abandoned by because I was trying to find a connection to this new stage in my life. As the heat overtook me I felt the vultures starting to circle, so I got up to walk back to my car.

That's when I found out it was him. He was not a stump. He was Amundsen. Carved in wood & standing 4.5'' tall in the shadow of the broken thermometer, in the parking lot of a gas station that was divided with lines drawn in dirt. From one desert to another, I had found my connection to this new place.