MOJO

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I’m driving on I-15 from Victorville toward Barstow, starting up the old road past the faded gray quarry and the railroad track where the bin cars wait for gravel to roll into the cars.  
Immense, gray tall structures with conveyer belts intertwined in a labyrinth of intersecting ramps and the railroad track filled with an outbound waiting to load.  It is an imposing structure and I like it.  The light is dusty and thin and not good for shooting photos, and I turn westbound up through the edge of town, past vast wrecking yards filled with flattened dead autos and up past the logistics airport.   
The road turns into Highway 395 and I move north up to Kramer Junction, and then turn off the main road into Randsburg.  It’s a dusty faded squatting town filled with backyards of junk and plywood sheds, a few main streets intersecting but no interesting restaurants, cafes, but only a couple of motels with cracking paint blistering in the desert heat.   
Pulling through town the road connects again with the main highway and I continue into Mojave, and down to Rosamond.  The railroad parallels the Sierra Highway and I pull off at an overpass and stop to shoot a train, straight and still against a sky clouded with charcoal and puffy white clouds spread over the mountains on the horizon. 
Skirting Palmdale and Lancaster, I criss-cross desert and back onto Pear Blossom Highway, past Phelan and Pinyon into steady traffic winding down Cajon Pass and back into the low desert.  It is a good, long drive, and I feel the desert settle into me and the spread of the land, windy and cool and dry.  Weather comes this week.  Rain likely most of the week.  
I feel some mojo. 


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