Amboy Crater, California

April 9 - 16, 2025

 

April 13th, 9:22 am. Waiting for the train, I wait for the train, for the picture of the train. When I turned past the tracks, at 8:36, the train passed both ways. I figured that it would keep passing, that it always passed. “93° hot, 17mph wind, 355° N, 34° 32’ 45” N, 115° 47’ 26” W, 940' above sea level,” I write off my phone, waiting. 10:43 and still no train. 1 hour and 21 minutes of lava rock pressed into my legs. I’ll try again tomorrow, maybe earlier, maybe it’s because it’s Sunday.

 

I went back to where I lived and paid attention to the ground. The ground is loud, louder than I think. Steps over thoughts, thankfully. I feel more parallel here. Eyes parallel to the horizon, parallel to the highway. More perpendicular too. I watch the electric pole from the porch, the clock ticked by the cars passing behind it. I went back to take the picture, some six, seven, or eight years after.

 

The black mound comes out of nowhere and unsurprisingly, where anything could be. Asleep in a bed of its own dried mess. The parking lot is a museum parking lot in a secondary city, modern-design shade structures. The trail is four miles out-and-back, flat and scorched. The ground is even louder. Even more attention to the ground. I crumble up its back and onto the rim.

 

April 14th, 8:43 am. I land on the rim. On the trail, at 8:09, I heard the train. 34 minutes late today, 46 minutes yesterday. I thought I heard the train again on my way up and rushed, but it was a family playing drone in the maze in the middle of the crater. Even though I sat here yesterday, I can’t find the same spot today. 

 

I took the highway all week, an hour each way. Through 29 Palms, where I always felt most strange. Wonder Valley, the houses beat the wind, hold with spit. The last house is a billboard, TRUMP/VANCE. The mirage is wet, wet-looking black, dry and beat. The word smithereens. If my tire went out, would I walk to the billboard of a house? It’s hard to tell distance here. War training ground on the left. Out of service Chloride on the right. Shallow scoops lined out in white, dumped in piles, a dead diorama of the pyramids. The turn, the train, Route 66, Roy’s. It was a motel owned by a chicken magnate. Now it’s a gift shop and a background in a car commercial. 

 

9:24, a long train from the right, east. 9:26, a short train from the left, west. They stop arm’s length in town. There was a post office across from the motel so it was a town. They move on 20 minutes later. 

 

Another long train. Another long honk across the great sky. 9:51 - 9:55. 4 minutes for the train to cross in one side and out the other. It’s too long to take the picture. The picture should be an accident as stunned as I was the first time I saw the train not knowing there was one there. This is the problem with returning, I think. And the promise of return bangs its head again. Full, like a big meal that doesn’t feel good, I skid down the rim again. Midway, my phone shakes, “Earthquake Detected! Drop, Cover, Hold On. Protect Yourself.”

 

I shot through 9 cameras through the week. Disposable cameras. I don’t know how to use others and these do enough, even too much. I didn’t think it mattered if the train showed up in the picture. But evidently, by my returning, it mattered plenty. I thought it would be too far from the picture. 5 miles from the rim to the tracks, straight away center. I thought that would be as good or better. I was surprised by the train in the picture. Bold, underlined, line in the picture.

 

A picture is a fraction that time doesn’t wait for. A minimum, from all to one, enough to pass something on. The secret that the photographer has, having lived. Having lived is all that’s passed and is enough. I can’t pass it on. You couldn’t either. Still something passes, is passed anyways. Picturing is touching, what touches. 

 

Back in my attic, sitting with my eyes open, I close my eyes like I’m not supposed to. A train two blocks away bleeps differently, compact and apologetically. With cupped hands cupping the sound, the train seesaws on the curve of my eyelids, picturing the train.