Desert Dog Blog

There were bodies everywhere …

Photo from Creative Commons

“There were bodies everywhere …” – Lucerne Valley was a tragic scene of carnage at 7:48 p.m. on Sunday, August 15.  A 19-year-old girl named Niky Carmikle was there with her boyfriend.  In fact, she had left her seat temporarily, and returned to find that her boyfriend, and seven others were crushed by the car.

“There were bodies everywhere,” Carmikle said (quoted from The Press Enterprise).

Investigators called to the scene said there were no barriers between the race track and the audience.  In fact, the audience was standing so close they could be described as the wall.   Except, of course, it was a wall made only of flesh and bone.  A wall made up of the very substance that a wall would have been protecting.

Brett Sloppy, owner of Misery Motorsports in San Marcos, was the driver of the Ford Ranger that careened into the audience.  While he was not hurt physically, I imagine the pain of knowing he was at least partially responsible for these deaths.  It was an accident, though, and most of the responsibility ought to be laid on the organizers of the event.

Everyone in attendance were very much like the Desert Dogs.  The Press Enterprise put it this way, “Many of the spectators were cut from a similar cloth of adventuring and hanging out in the desert.”

To our fallen desert rats, rest in peace.

Remember Desert Magazine?

The 1937 edition of The Desert Magazine

Remember the old Desert magazine?  It’s publication ran from 1937 all the way to 1985, when its management decided to close up shop.

The original Desert Magazine was published from 1937 to 1985 by a man named Randall Henderson.  In 1958 he passed the torch, and other editors kept the magazine afloat until 1985.  Since then, efforts have been made to resurrect Desert magazine in print and as an online magazine.  The latest, and most promising, effort is www.dezertmagazine.com.

This online magazine is founded by John Grassom.  Grassom said Dezert Magazine is “a quarterly online publication dedicated to all things southwest. This includes archeology, anthropology, history, 4×4ing, travel, wildlife, botany, rock hounding and treasure hunting.”

Grassom added, “We are simply moving forward with the same commitment and passion as the first.”

The first Desert Magazine focused on archaeology, wildlife, human interest stories, history, geology, and anything desert-related.  And that’s what Dezert Magazine is going to be about.

Grassom invited the Desert Dogs to participate in providing content to their magazine, with the first issue coming up on October 1. We hope that this will be the beginning of a long and enduring friendship.

I’ll finish with this last bit, written by Mr. Henderson himself, in the very first edition of Desert Magazine, waaaaay back in 1937.  He wrote that there’s the desert that poets and authors dredge up – a purely imagined world, and then there’s the real desert. 

“The other Desert—the real Desert-—is not for the eyes of the superficial observer, or the fearful soul or the cynic. It is a land, the character of which is hidden except to those who come with friendliness and understanding. To these the Desert offers rare gifts: health-giving sunshine—a sky that is studded with diamonds—a breeze that bears no poison—a landscape of pastel colors such as no artist can duplicate—thorn-covered plants which during countless ages have clung tenaciously to life through heat and drought and wind and the depredations of thirsty animals, and yet each season send forth blossoms of exquisite coloring as a symbol of courage that has triumphed over terrifying obstacles. To those who come to the Desert with friendliness, it gives friendship; to those who come with courage, it gives new strength of character. Those seeking relaxation find release from the world of man-made troubles. For those seeking beauty, the Desert offers nature’s rarest artistry. This is the Desert that men and women learn to love.”

Let the new Dezert Magazine forge its own trail, but we let it also keep alive the tradition of giving the desert its due respect and homage.