Salvation Mountain

Happy New Year, everyone!

Two days ago Mr. C and I took the kids for a short road trip out here to the Salton Sea. Now, before you ask what in the world is out there that we'd want to show our kids, let me answer- there's PUHLENTY of weird stuff. Like, a beach where the "sand" that crunches under your feet is made up entirely of sun-bleached-broken-up-fish bones. And a supposed "Fountain of Youth". And a man-made technicolor mountain.

Yep.  Lots of weird stuff.  In fact, there's a whole post worth of which I have aspirations for writing later on in the week.  For now I just want to write about one little piece of the trip because I think it pertains to the New Year.  At least, I think it does.  Maybe not.  Maybe this is just what happens when I drive out to the middle of the desert and start trying to think deep thoughts.  Or maybe this is what happens when I stay up late to celebrate the New Year and try to write something serious the next day.

Maybe this'll all be a load of bunk.  I don't know.  Just stick with me.

Okay.  So.  Out in the middle of the desert, off the shores of the Salton Sea near this weird place called Slab City, there's this other weird place called Salvation Mountain.  You may have heard of it.  The guy who built it was in a movie made back in 2007 called "Into the Wild" (Good movie, by the way.  It's not about Salvation Mountain, but the character in it stopped there in his travels, and so you meet the real Leonard Knight, the creator of the mountain, in the context of the movie).  There's also been a few documentaries done on Mr. Knight and his mountain.  Those, I haven't seen.  However, for the few minutes of screen time that I did see of Mr. Knight in Into the Wild, I can tell you that he comes off as very gentle, very loving, but also slightly um.... batshit.  That's okay though.  That's about what I would expect for someone who lives out in the middle of the desert and builds a monument to God from cement and window putty, all on $242 a month.  (I'm not sure if the desert attracts people who are already a little nutso, or if it turns them that way once they're there, but it sure does seem like these spots are full of people with eccentric personalities.)

At any rate, the mountain itself is a pretty impressive sight.  The story is that Leonard Knight stopped there for a few days in the 80's after a failed attempt to launch a massive hot air balloon with the words "God is Love" on it.  He decided instead to build a small monument to God, which turned into Salvation Mountain.  The first mountain actually crumbled a few years after he started it, so he started the whole thing over again from scratch.  He lived out of his truck, worked with the sun (except in the summer when it was too hot- then he'd work from dawn to 10 and take the rest of the day off), and relied on donations of paint from people who supported his cause.  (And once word got out about what he was doing, people started coming by the hundreds.)

The end result is what you see here:

I had 2 different perspectives while at Salvation Mountain.  When I first arrived there, I was just viewing it as a massive piece of folk art.  Leonard Knight was by no means a serious artist, he was simply a devoted artist.  When you walk around the mountain you can see that he poured the paint on thick, thick, thick, not minding where spatters and splatters flew.  It's folksy, it's impressive, but I wonder if most people don't look at it and think, "Well, what a wonderful wacky little piece of weirdness done by some religious yahoo. He really must have had too much sun. "

Honestly, that's kind of what my first impression was.

Then, however, we noticed that some members of the community were kind of sitting around- almost like they were keeping vigil.  One guy was sitting next to Mr. Knights' truck, another was sitting in a folding chair near a patch of used paint cans.  Brushes were just sitting on top of the cans, like they were waiting to be taken in hand and used again.  I picked up on this feeling- like I was at a wake, and this prompted me to pull out my phone and do some quick research on Mr. Knight.   I learned that he had died on Dec. 13th, just over two weeks prior to our visit.  So, his friends were, in fact, there at the mountain keeping vigil.

Now I know this kind of makes me shallow- to change the way I look at something just because death has touched it in some way, but I think I've always been pretty honest with you guys when it comes to my short comings.  So I don't feel too bad confessing that this new knowledge made me look at Salvation Mountain as more than just a piece of folk art.  Knowing that Mr. Knight had been working on his mountain just 3 short weeks ago and would never come back to it again, caused me to think about the mountain in terms of its creator's life.

This guy had a message that he wanted to share: Love is Universal and God is Love. Wether you agree with his message or not, aren't you impressed that for the last 30 years of his life, he devoted himself completely to sharing that message?  When he was awake, he was mostly working on his mountain.  He didn't take vacations.  He gave up almost all worldly goods.  He had no water, gas, or electricity.   He lived out of his truck, and yet he also managed to create this community around his mountain- people who saw his message, saw his devotion, and supported him.  Twice, the vision for his message failed-when the hot air balloon rotted and when the first mountain crumbled.  Each time he just started over, simply thanking God for showing him his failure so that he could do it better.  He was 100% devoted to his passion.  Was he a little nuts?  Maybe.  But maybe not.  It takes a lot of courage to give up conventional society.  He was living his truth.  When you think about it, that's kind of....... marvelous.

As we drove away from Salvation Mountain, I found myself grateful to be given the opportunity in the last few days of the year to see an example of someone living exclusively for their own passion.  What if we all were able to do that?  Of course, I don't believe that we should all take it to the degree that Leonard Knight did- I love hot showers and kettle chips too much to do that.  But it was so good to be reminded in time for the New Year, with all its promises and new beginnings and fresh starts, of what can be waiting for us when we strip away things like finances and stress and society.  I may not be able to build a physical mountain like Mr. Leonard Knight did, but in this new year I'm hoping to keep in mind a metaphorical mountain- a truth that I can devote time to for no other reason than to feed my own soul.  I think we should all do that.  Personally, my mountain would probably take the form of this blog.  Or maybe it would just be my kids.  Both these things feed my soul. (Although there are days when it feels like the kids are actually eating my soul....but those are the bad days and I'm trying to be positive here, so forget I even brought that up.)

At any rate, I encourage you to ask yourself what your mountain would look like and then start building it.  I bet what you end up with will be wonderfully weird.  Or weirdly wonderful.

Just like Salvation Mountain.