What brings us to the desert, and what keeps us there? In this Offing essay, Zoe Kurland writes about the Marfa Lights Viewing Center, an unassuming roadside stop in West Texas where travelers hope to glimpse the mysterious Marfa lights over Mitchell Flat. More like an open-air church than a tourist attraction, the center has become something else for Kurland: a place of both “emptiness and promise,” of romantic encounters and quiet reckoning, where visitors become lovers and then disappear, and where she continues to wonder what exactly she’s looking for.
But as I sit in my house, so quiet I can hear the blood in my body, the sunset painting the sky a deep, pink hue, I can only think that all of these men are gone and I am still here. I continue, continue, and continue, to still be here. It seems I am in wait, Jodie Foster on the side of the road, letting the world, and the world beyond the world, whisper into my ears. I wonder sometimes if I am the viewing center, just a widened shoulder on the road that people visit and leave. I wonder what I am looking for.Â
More desert reads
The Desert Safety Net
“Every winter, tens of thousands of Americans migrate to public lands in the Arizona desert. For a growing number, it’s not a vacation—it’s the only housing they can afford.”
The California Town With Less Than 30 Residents Begging for Young People to Move In
“The gold that once drew opportunists to this slice of California now attracts a new generation.”
The Last Resort
“At Bombay Beach, a half-ruined former vacation town on the edge of the Salton Sea, absurdist philosophers, artists, and everyday townsfolk have undertaken a postapocalyptic experiment in radical living.”
