This past weekend, we heeded the strange siren call of the Salton Sea and drove once again into Imperial Valley.  As an amateur photographer and a collector of stories, Imperial Valley has become an obsession.  There are incredible images at every turn and generous storytellers -- real characters with a weathered but reliable charisma.  You meet them in the strangest places.  This is the story of meeting one in the middle of the desert. 

I've spent a fair bit of time around the Salton Sea (though it never seems like enough) and some surreal story always emerges from my visits to the Valley.  Last July, we went to Bombay Beach and I had a terrifying encounter with thousands (millions!) of flies trapped in a car... OUR CAR! And I'm not talking regular ole flies; I'm talking flies that had just been hobnobbing on rotting fish.  Apparently bored with miles of fish carcasses, swarms of flies decided to bum rush our car (more advice:  even if you are in the 110 degree heat of Bombay Beach, don't leave your car window cracked.  The flies will find you).  And you know what?  There's only one way to get rid of those suckers... you just have to get in the car and drive.  Imagine it right now, sitting at your desk, what it would be like to get in a sauna-like car with thousands of flies and the stench of dead fish -- now imagine having to sit there with them all over you while driving as fast as you can with the windows down so they would fly out.  I'm telling you, it tested my mettle and, well... I personally think I'm special forces material now.      

Anyway, for this trip, I wanted to see Salvation Mountain and Slab City, sans flies.  Both places were featured in two recent films:  a documentary called Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Sea (narrated by John Waters!) and Into the Wild, last year's feature film directed by Sean Penn.  

Slab City and Salvation Mountain are in the middle of the Mojave desert, about three miles east of Niland, California, at the foot of the Chocolate Mountains.  Driving through Brawley and Niland, we were a little worried about getting lost.   Having left the GPS at home (another genius move), we figured we'd rely on the old school method of a paper map.

Words of advice: If you can't GPS,  then you best not forget to laminate. 

It turns out Salvation Mountain isn't hard to find. Once you get to Niland, just go to Main Street (not that many streets to begin with) and head east.  Before the road bends, you catch a glimpse of the colorful, candy-like mountain in the distance.  I can't imagine what it would be like to just stumble upon Salvation Mountain.  Driving in the desert involves observations like:  "wow, look at that cactus," and,  "boy, is it hot out here," and "I wonder if there are rattlesnakes," not "hey, check out the brightly-colored mountian spouting Bible verse."  And that's why you have to see Salvation Mountain;  it's so wonderfully strange and alien.

Salvation Mountain is the work of one man with lots of paint and a simple message:  God is Love.  Originally, Leonard Knight thought he'd spread the word of God through a hot air balloon, because...you know... why not? 

He spent 10 years trying to raise the money for the balloon and then decided he would try and sew it together himself.   He began sewing in Nebraska, but the fabric rotted one winter, and when Leonard moved to Slab City he discovered his project wasn't salvageable.  It was time to give up the hot air balloon dream and figure out what to do next.  It occurred to him that he could paint a mountain into the landscape.  To that I just say: it's the desert.  Trippy ideas bounce off the land left and right.  One could attribute Leonard's dream to the desert heat or his pure evangelism, but either way I'm sure glad he stuck to it. 

Leonard estimates it's taken over 100,000 gallons of paint to make the mountain, which is constructed out of adobe and straw.  Leonard has worked on it year round for almost 30 years.  In the summer months, he works early in the morning and naps during the extreme heat.  If you visit, he'll be there giving tours, telling you about his mission, and posing for pictures. 

Leonard lives right at the base of Salvation Mountain, in a vintage truck with a makeshift cabin built on the back.  The truck is also painted in bold colors with Bible verses. Leonard has no electricity, water, or a bathroom.  He's off the grid, but has an entire mountain to show for it.

Tourists and residents of Slab City and Niland bring him food and paint.  Some even stick around to work with him for a couple of hours. 

I read that some years back, a dust up ensued over whether Salvation Mountain was an environmental hazard.  There's probably tons of lead on that thing.  Nothing much came of the controversy and in 2002, Senator Barbara Boxer placed Salvation Mountain on the Congressional Record as a national treasure.  Leonard must have told us this four or five times.  He's so proud that someone thinks it's a treasure.  

Leonard is 77 years old.  Salvation Mountain is now protected, but it's all the more special when you can see it with him. Go visit.  Bring him some paint or make a donation. 

Leonard Knight is an outsider artist, a missionary, and a classic dreamer.  You gotta love dreamers in the desert.

We've spent the week here at These Days immersed in all things Imperial Valley.  We did a live broadcast on Wednesday night from the California Mid-Winter Fair and Fiesta, which I've shortened in my brain to the Imperial Valley Fair.  As part of our coverage, KPBS Jacobs Fellow Nicole Lozare and I went out to the fair on Saturday to collect audio and take photographs. You can see a slideshow of our day here.

Nicole was on audio and I ran around with two cameras (and one heavy-a** lens).  We talked to the Jugless Jug Band, Washboard Willie, and spent a lot of time capturing the 4H competitions.  I loved every minute of it, all the while trying really hard to fit in and not seem so...city.  As I roamed the competition grounds, I acted unfazed and "whatever" when I stepped into pile after pile of pig and cow doodoo.  I was all "no biggie, just a little bull dung...seen it before....new to actually STEPPING in it, but...I'm cool."  A woman saw me look at the bottom of my sneakers then eye the wash area where animals are hosed down.  I asked her, "Can I wash off my shoes over there?"  She surpressed a giggle and said, "You really just want to just walk around. It will dry and fall off throughout the day." This was an entirely new concept and hard for me to wrap my head around. "Seriously? Walk around with it on my shoes all day long?" I probably should have listened to this veteran fairgoer.  Instead, I marched over to the wash area and spent 15 minutes hosing down my shoes which were then squishy and wet all day long.  Unpleasant, to be sure, but more unpleasant than a day of doodoo shoes?  I just don't know.  

Here's the other clue Nicole and I were fish out of water.   Our trusted guide was the fair's publicist Bill Gay.  He walked us towards the animals, proudly telling us we'd see lamb, steer, and heifers in the barns.  At which point, Nicole turned to me and said, "What's a heifer again?"  I replied, "Ummm, I think it's a pig." Bill was sweet enough not to roll his eyes.

Though we gathered a lot of good tape and images, the day had its challenges.  It's hot out there in the desert, people.  Like my friend Tay says... hot, like hot.  It was also windy.  Windy, sandy, and hot.  Seven hours of running around in those conditions, you've got something to show for it. You're sweaty.  You have a fine grain of sand all over you and you smell...different.  When you leave a place like that, you feel like you've actually been somewhere. There's something exhilarating about that.

Despite the many stories we got, there were some that we missed and to be honest, those haunt me.  Duke Adams (right) is one of them.  Retired Elvis impersonator turned donut maker. He goes by Deputy Hounddog because back in 2005 he helped the Vegas police nab a thief who stole $300,000 in jewelry from the Elvis-a-Rama Museum. The thief approached Adams in a drug store, asking if he wanted to purchase some authentic Elvis jewelry.  Adams remembered the museum robbery and proceeded to set up a sting operation with the police.  They caught the thief the next day.  CNN interviewed Adams and dubbed him Deputy Hounddog.  The name stuck and Adams named his touring donut-making stand Deputy Hounddog's Mini-Donuts.  We were so tired by the time we met Adams, we couldn't manage another interview.  Instead, I ate six of the little deep-fried, sugar-coated goodies on the drive home.  All I have to show from my run-in with Deputy Hounddog is this picture and some additional fat cells. No tape.  

The other story I missed is less quirky than Duke Adams, but more compelling.  During one of the 4H competitions in which girls were showing their lamb, I noticed a young girl in the center whose lamb was not cooperating.  All the other contending lamb were lined up, their owners firmly holding the lamb heads against their legs to keep them still while the judge walked by.  But this particular lamb was bucking and pulling away.  The girl was struggling and embarrassed, since the competition was held in a large arena with a good size audience in the bleachers.  This girl's lamb wasn't even in line when the judge walked by, it was trying to escape through the fence.  When the competition was over and the kids and lamb filed out of the arena, I caught a glimpse of the girl's face.  It was red, and she was crying.  

When Gay Talese was on These Days, he talked about always pursuing the stories of the loser, like the Chinese girl he wrote about who missed a penalty kick during the women's soccer finals.  Talese talked about the drama of losing and how you can learn a lot about a subject based on how they make sense of loss.  He said loss can either build character or foster bitterness. The moment I saw that girl's face, I knew she was the story.  Here she had worked with this lamb, raised it, cared for it, named it, and it betrayed her at a crucial moment.  How did she feel about that?  Was she angry at the lamb? Would she ignore it now?  Was she going to use the winning money for her college education?  What would she do now?  Would she still compete in 4H?  Would she abandon this lamb and raise another to compete?  How would her family treat her that night?  Would someone give her advice on winning and losing?

When I saw the girl's face as she walked out, all I had was my camera.  Nicole was in another barn doing interviews and she had the recording equipment.  By the time Nicole returned, the girl had left. I fired off only one shot from behind.

Later, we talked to one of the winners of the heifer competition, a pretty young girl with straight white teeth and silky blond hair.  She was in the winner's circle so I snapped her picture.  She was so pretty and well-spoken, one got the sense the world would celebrate her wins for a long time to come. I couldn't help but consider how often stories like the girl and her losing lamb get drowned out by the winner's circle.