Quartzite
If you watched the movie Nomad then you know something of this place. We were passing through coming from Blythe California across the dwindling Colorado River into Arizona. A quick stop in Quartzite for gas and a little food. The next five days would be blessed desert solitude with good friends.
A few weeks back we shared beers with a couple women camped near us in the Anza-Borrego Desert. We engaged in the usual pleasantries of looking at and discussing different RV tradeoffs. I find the whole thing tedious but engage with as much enthusiasm as I can muster. It seems to be part of the culture when you find yourself towing your shelter. Sometimes it gets a little intense…
Earlier in the week we were sitting in camp enjoying the quiet and sun when a MAGA-coded older couple rolled up in their recombinant bikes (recombinant bikes do not make them MAGA-coded except this kind did). The woman suddenly on the left; our dog alarmed, barking madly at the sudden invasion. The commotion meant I could only just make out the “What part of Idaho you from!” that she barked.
Meanwhile as we tried to quiet the dog her husband wheeled in from the patch of desert on the right in a pincer movement and said “Nice rig!”. The stock opener.
Fuck how did that happen? We’re surrounded and nowhere to run, now we have to act sociable. Encircled, I now felt on the defensive and not kindly disposed; but we must steel ourselves to these insults and try and maintain an air of grace I think through gritted brow.
So we now tried to engage in a dual conversation feeling our peaceful morning disappear into the rapidly shrinking salient. They were from North-east Oregon, had cycled near Couer d’Alene once. I made some anodyne comments about ‘the rig’ and eventually I suppose my poorly disguised irritation caused them to reconsider their offensive and find softer targets and move on.
Back to story…
These women we were sat down with were very good company and had a good sense of humour (which I define as someone who gets or laughs at my jokes, just kidding, though it helps). They had that social earnestness of Californians, full of confidence and optimism. We discussed future travel plans and that they were heading to Quartzite. Not somewhere near but the town itself. They had been there before and were going again. I was left agog, they didn’t seem that thick.
They were headed to the LTVA, had seen and loved Nomad (me too!) and were excited by some giant year-round RV event there. Ugh! To each their own but at least we had garnered a little intelligence without resorting to more desperate means. Great I thought, we need to get in and out as quickly as possible. Perhaps fast enough and the place will leave no impression on us.
(I have to say I have met some very nice and interesting people on this trip despite my determined efforts not to. This couple was amongst them.)
I wrote in an earlier piece about the LTVA (Long Term Visitor Area) which is a designation for a few places in the deserts of California and Arizona where people can stay longer than normally allowed on public land (typically 14 days in a row). Started in the 1980’s for retired RV owners as a away to escape cold winters and not have to relocate periodically. You pay a nominal fee to the BLM and have a licence to stay in these designated areas. A few of which are scattered around Quartzite.
By the 2008 financial crises this became a means for people dispossessed of their houses and/or jobs by the crisis to find a means to live more cheaply by living in their van, car, or RV. In other words, welfare American style. Homelessness without messing up the streets. Sell your home, if you own one, and move to the desert and see how long the proceeds last.
When we got to Quartzite we found ourselves in some kind of strange desert carnival. Mad Max meets the Kardashians. After gassing up we went to find food at some independent small shop with coyote in the name of course (a bodega in the current parlance). It had small stores of most things like any convenience shop except it also had a full-time butcher. Cool but weird. The staff looked mostly like retirees trying to stretch the Social Security or to ward off the boredom of hanging with hubby in a small plastic box all day. Everyone was pleasant and friendly.
In the parking lot was what had to be an $80,000 Jeep Gladiator that two well attired women got out of next to a clapped out old chevy van with a guy inside feeding his dog. Inside the van was the budget DIY result of making the place more liveable. The van must have been 25 years old. Definitely not the $90,000 Mercedes Sprinter vans that make up the fantasy of van-life. This was not van-life this was life-in-a-van.
Stocked up we set forth on the main drag again, looking for the highway towards Yuma. Arizona has a very liberal view of the latest plague of public lands, the side-by-side. It is apparent all over public lands now with their tracks gracing previously trackless lands. A veritable plague of ICE (not that ICE but Internal Combustion Engines) locusts expressing their god-given right to drive where-ever-the-hell they want. They are also allowed on public roadways and so were everywhere. They seem to pull out of nowhere and squirt around in nervous-making ways, if you are genuinely inclined to avoid striking one.
Quartzite is the first place in America I have observed that looks more like a village in Africa or Mexico. Businesses will be just tarps stretched over poles of scaffolding selling firewood or other items. A mad cacophony of capitalism stretched to the thinest margins.
We found highway 95 which was interesting as it is the same ribbon of tarmac that runs through our hometown 2000 miles further north. Once we crossed the interstate we found ourselves in some bizarre traffic jam of RVs, side-by-sides, scooters and cars. I almost veered in the wrong lane that would have taken us into the pit of hell that is this giant tented RV extravaganza. This must have been what the ladies back in Anza-Borrego were talking about. There appeared to be no exit. This seemed to be a major source of entertainment here, everyone seemed to be heading there. We passed on the opportunity to learn more, preferring instead to retain our peace of mind.
Once we passed this clot of humanity we sped up down the highway and the actuality of LTVA life spread across the desert before our unbelieving eyes. We first thought an RV dealership? Maybe an RV park? Not it was too disordered. There were thousands of RVs spread through the creosote dotted plains but with no sense or organization. No defined roads, no lanes, no order, just everyone parked everywhere and anywhere they wanted. Signs indicated where the LTVA began and ended. Vault toilets were dotted around and here the concentration of RVs increased. Tall flags on whippy poles thirty feet over the desert on some RVs seemed to be the only navigation aid or perhaps revealed some community or affinity.
It went on for miles before thinning out and finally ending. My friend a former firefighter said this was a first responder’s nightmare. How to find someone in distress and how to get aid to them. He also had the insight that having them all concentrated here meant fewer elsewhere. Every cloud!
We went on to find a campsite in the Kofa NWR and had wonderfully peaceful week with our friends. But I could not help but reflect on the strange forces and collision of circumstance in Quartzite. It was quintessentially American, the rich and desperately unfortunate rubbing along with the poor on the vast American desert. Reaping some of the rich legacy of public lands. Finding, I suppose, some sense of community out there. Like a modern-day story of the Joads next to palatial RVs, no visible means of support. Complete and utter freedom. It also seemed to me like some kind of hell. Part of it, an admission of failure.
I have spoken to a couple of nomads, and they seem proud of the designation. Leaning in fiercely to the idea this was their idea of freedom and the American dream. Also it seems they are grateful for a movie that gave them a name and a place on the American scene that portrayed them with the dignity they deserve. I do get the sense they wished they were not in these circumstances that were not really of their choosing. But, ain’t that America.
Nowhere else but America…
