The soul selects her own society, Unmoved, she notes the chariot’s pausing I’ve known her from an ample nation
Then shuts the door;
On her divine majority
Obtrude no more.
At her low gate;
Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling
Upon her mat.
Choose one;
Then close the valves of her attention
Like stone.
- Emily Dickenson
By Eric Thayer
Somewhere on the edge of reality is this place.
They live a frontier existence, a hard life made more harsh by the elements. No water, no electricity, it’s a wicked landscape, dotted with expensive RVs, beat-up trailers, tents, art installations. It’s a place that exists in legends that are told around campfires or by train hoppers huddled in a box car.
Everything about this place says fringe, passing along a weathered desert road outside a small town in the desert. Through a town that itself is a sort of gateway equidistant between two major highways, but close to neither on the bottom tip of the Salton Sea. I drive through town along a weathered strip of asphalt across two sets of railroad tracks to a dirt road. This is a place people go to get away from society, to escape, to go into self-proclaimed exile from the mainstream, into a society of travelers, hippies, snowbirds, artists, outcasts, the down on their luck, the slightly unhinged and the downright crazy.
