Welcome back the Sun - Like Ice On Desert Plain

Today is the shortest day of the year and with it the sun has rounded the horn and will slowly creep it's way back into the Northern Skies. I always love to welcome the sun back on its return. I ran an easy 45 minutes on the Chip today and by 5:00 it was crazy dark. So dark in fact, that I didn't see the black berry stringer across the trail, and apparently my legs were numb from the cold so when I came into the house Oakley quickly pointed out the bloody scratches across my quads. Oh well, I love anytime I can donate a little blood to my passions, and trail running has taken it's share from me. I really enjoyed my run tonight. Nothing to write home about, but it was relaxed, and I even felt the warm buzz of a runner's high 3/4 into the run. Perhaps the high is a precursor to the return of my fitness, and not a moment too soon because I am way north of 145lbs (I like to be south of 140 when racing).

Today's song is an awesome 9 minute trance song that came out in 2000. This song has been buzzing around in my head for the past month and today it accompanied me on nearly a quarter of my workout. "Pile Driver (Grayed out Summer Mix)" by Amoebaassassin and mixed by Paul Oakenfold is an underrated classic from the genre and time period. The song came from the Planet Perfecto two disc album, and was a catalyst for an already writhing interest in electronic music for me. I feel it has received little attention and yet it is such an amazing song on so many levels (it is best listened to with a good headset in the dark while laying down). There is a sort of energy about it and it definitely transports me to many different times and places. The lyrics took me quite a while to work out (try to get them right) and I have found 100's of interpretations including my own that all completely vary. I feel I finally found the correct ones and they seem to match.

I have too many amazing experiences with this song to even begin to try to disclose them all. The reason I chose the song today is that while running in the dark a line from the song struck me; the line "Like Ice on Desert Plain" triggered a memory of me and my brother looking for a treasure in the Black Rock Desert the day after Thanksgiving in 2001. We had done our homework and were interested in a story of a man who had become lost in the Black Rock Desert region of Utah and found shelter in a crevice in a low lying ledge somewhere in the desert. As the morning light filtered through the entrance he saw leather sacks full of small gold nuggets. Apparently he grabbed some gold and took notice of the surrounding landmarks and headed to the small town of Meadow and back home. He intended to return and find the small horde but like any great lost treasure story the area was too vast and the terrain too similar to ever find the exact crevice.

My brother and I were certain we could find it. We took a scientific approach and triangulated his location using software and the landmarks and used the low lying ledge clue to ascertain what would cause the ledges and came up with several bands of ledges to explore. It was an amazing gray day and a winter storm was on the horizon as we scrambled on foot and in the truck over miles of desert plains. Occasionally there would be large puddles that had frozen solid in depressions in the grass, like mercury spilled over a textured canvas. It was a stark contrast to the hexagonal black columnar basalt ledges and outcrops. We didn't locate the crevice ourselves but did find Fremont Native Art that most likely hadn't been viewed in hundreds or thousands of years by man. We even found the start of a small mine in the black rock from the turn of the century. It was an amazing trip and this song played on repeat as we bounced in Richies red Chevy in the triple junction of the Pavant Butte, the Plateau Country, and edge of the Great Basin. The return home like hundreds of trips before and many hundreds more after did not produce the results that we had so adamantly sworn were destined to happen, but the treasure we found on those trips were always more subtle and not always immediately apparent. Today while running this song brought me back to the basalt flows of the Black Rock Desert splattered with silvery puddles -- a literal interpretation of the song's interesting lyrics. It brought me back to a time with my brother when obsession and extreme and absolute positive thinking ruled. I miss these trips of ours and the desert.