Nine Nevada Depressions

“[T]o go down into the water, or to wander in the desert, is to change space,” and by changing space, by leaving the space of one’s usual sensibilities, one enters into communication with a space that is psychically innovating. “Neither in the desert nor in the bottom of the sea does one’s spirit remain sealed and indivisible.” This change of concrete space can no longer be a mere mental operation that could be compared with consciousness of geometrical relativity. For we do not change place, we change our nature.

—Gaston Bachelard, quoting Philippe Diolé in The Poetics of Space

I. BASIN-RANGE

the road extends westward like a ray, continues in a straight line from one point, the point is at the base of a mountain or crossing the border from Utah, and the line is straight, extending westward, flat to the north and south horizons, nothing on either side but desert, sage brush, joshua tree, salt flat, jackrabbit, land flat enough to land planes, the road flanked by barbed wire and fly zone signs, dusty hills in the distance are bunkers, west lies a range, ahead extending the length of that horizon in a straight line is a sharp rise of mountains, brown, dark against the sky, the sky is blue or cloudy, the road winds up the face, climbs three to five thousand feet, juniper, cedar, fir, darker soil, sloping gulches, down after the summit, a winding descent, then the road extends westward like a ray, continues in a straight line from the base of the mountain, it extends westward, the desert on either side flat enough to land a plane, sage brush, joshua tree, fly zone, dusty hills in the distance are mirages, the road straight, cutting across the land, and then the sharp rise of mountains, dark against a blue or gray sky, pine trees and elk, the road winds to the summit curving over uplifts, three to five thousand feet, down after the summit, around sloping gulches, the road descends to a point and then stretches outward west—this the width of the state

II. FOLDS

Lay a paper napkin on a table and press your hands to its edges. Pull the napkin taut. As you slide your hands together, the napkin wrinkles form north-south ridges, uplifts.

These faults were created by stresses, tensions, strains and compressive forces in the earth’s thin crust. Throughout Nevada the crust has suffered violent shifting: thrusting, warping, splitting, splintering—some kind of subterranean force.

Millions of years ago, the land was more pliant. Mud forever thick. An ocean was here, water dark and cool along the basins.

The remains of plants, leaves, cones, stems, and seeds as well as the bodies of fresh-water fishes, the bones of horses, antelopes, camels, and lumbering rhinos, all long since extinct, became embedded in the lake-bed ash.

Camp, Charles L. Child of the Rocks: The Story of Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. Nevada Natural History Association, 1981

III. FOSSILS

Ichthyosaurs were fish-lizards, faces like dolphins, small dorsal fins, giant buoyant bodies like whales. They came from the land to the water. They became fish. They swam over Nevada.

As the animals die they sink and roll, sliding down slick mud. The bones pool together in one place. The fossils are intertwined: bones of the body, skull, ribs and paddles. Bones of the head, turned sharply to one side, sometimes doubled back. A thin ring of overlapping bones around the great eyeball preventing its collapse. It is a case of reading the scattered bones as if they were tea leaves. Anything bigger than what you can hold in your hand means that you can’t see everything. The Earth is a mere speck in the universe.

Camp, Charles L. Child of the Rocks: The Story of Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. Nevada Natural History Association, 1981.
Rosner, Hillary. “New Clues to the Past in Nevada’s Desert Fossils,” High Country News, 21 Dec. 2015, http://www.hcn.org/issues/SecretsOfTheDeep/secrets-of-the-deep-the-nevada-bone-bed-that-holds-clues-to-the-wests-distant-past

IV. EXTRATERRESTRIAL HIGHWAY

Highway 50 runs horizontally across the state and south but parallel is 6. From 6, 357 turns south to Rachel. We pull over on 357 and turn off the car, get out. The world is black like we are under water, at the bottom of the ocean. Then, stars innumerable, a bright, vast universe. Nothing earthly illuminated. As soon as we become motionless, we are elsewhere; we are dreaming in a world that is immense. The Milky Way arcs above, every speck infinite, and an infinity of lights; some move steadily across the sky, some flicker, some shoot or drop, others move unpredictably, a group of three, steady and then up, over, steady there, a shape in the sky.

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press, 1994.

V. AREA 51

The back entrance is ten miles west of Rachel down a washboard dirt road. The radio turns to static. There is a small white guardhouse, white trucks, and signs reading NO PHOTOGRAPHY.

It is certainly a place, a physical claim, an impression on the land: Place is the opposite of abstraction; it is immovable, concrete, unchangeable.

Groom Lake is dry. This place exists only in abstraction.

1. dirt roads, guard houses, runways, buildings, underground facilities, hangars of drones, foreign crafts, radar
2. remains of Roswell, grays, exotic weapons, exotic propulsion systems, weather control, time travel, teleportation

The radio turns to static. The planes they are testing or reverse engineering or building from scratch, decades of advanced technology, flash. A light is moving across the sky like skipping a stone across water.

Solnit, Rebecca. Savage Dreams. Sierra Club Books, 1994.
Area 51. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51
Dreamland: Area 51. Directed by Bruce Burgess. Transmedia, 1996.

VI. SOLAR ARRAY

The road extends westward like a ray, and from far away, from miles, a bright light: fine, white-yellow, on the side of the highway. The light grows: an orb in the distance, a star, a UFO, a small sun.

Black and silver panels form concentric circles. At the center, a pillar with a wide base, and atop that a shining, an impossibly shining metal cylinder. The mirrored panels send sun beams to the cylinder. The pillar is filled with molten salt that circulates. This produces steam which produces electricity.

Birds flying in the line of sight, in the beams of light, turn to smoke.

VII. SUBSIDENCE

Bore holes straight down a mile. It’s important that they’re straight. The explosion creates a sphere in the ground, an opening; the sphere’s walls are glass.

The Nevada Test Site is 1,375 square miles of land for testing atomic weapons. You’re not supposed to eat deer hunted near there. Dust settled over everything; hair fell out. They moved the tests underground.

The bomb test names include rivers, mountains, famous scientists, small mammals, fish, birds, vehicles, cocktails, automobiles, trees, cheeses, wines, fabrics, tools, nautical terms, colors, and ghost towns.

National Nuclear Security Administration. Nevada Test Site Guide, 1 March 2005, https://www.nnss.gov/docs/docs_LibraryPublications/DOENV_715_Rev1.pdf
Houser, F.N. “Subsidence Related to Underground Nuclear Explosions, Nevada Test Site.” Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, vol. 59, no. 6, 1969. pp. 2231-2251.
Solnit, Rebecca. Savage Dreams. Sierra Club Books, 1994.

VIII. SITE FOR BURIAL

What was in the pit that started on fire—there was no record. The accident occurred after days of heavy rainfall, a rare occurrence in an area that resembles a moonscape.

The water table is approximately 800 feet below ground. If they carve out Yucca Mountain, immeasurable space will open above and below ground.

The land swells with earth tides; infrequent rain seeps.

More than 30 uranium disposal cells have been constructed over the last 25 years, primarily to contain radioactive contamination from decommissioned uranium mills and processing sites. They are time capsules designed to take their toxic contents, undisturbed, intact, away from the present and as far into the future as possible.

Rogers, Keith. “A Year After Fiery Accident at Radioactive Waste Dump in Nevada, the Meter is Running on a Fix.” Las Vegas Review-Journal. 23 October 2016. https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-nevada/a-year-after-fiery-accident-at-radioactive-waste-dump-in-nevada-the-meter-is-running-on-a-fix/

National Nuclear Security Administration. Nevada Test Site Guide, 1 March 2005, https://www.nnss.gov/docs/docs_LibraryPublications/DOENV_715_Rev1.pdf

The Center for Land Use Interpretation. http://www.clui.org/

IX. DOUBLE NEGATIVE

Michael Heizer draws on the surface of dry lake beds by digging trenches that form geometrical figures. He blows up the land, creates cavities, carves prisms downward when the state has mines and subsidence craters, buildings under construction, tunnels and roads.

I didn’t want to make objects.
I was interested in massive objects as well as the absence of objects.
Material was removed rather than accumulated.

Heizer’s father dug up a flat perforated horn. In its countless alveoli space contains compressed time. That is what space is for.

The bombs turn to gas.

“Nine Nevada Depressions” from Fox, William L. Mapping the Empty: Eight Artists and Nevada. University of Nevada Press, 1999.
Heizer, Robert Fleming and Alex Dony Kreiger. The Archaeology of Humboldt Cave: Churchill County, Nevada. University of California Press, 1956.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press, 1994.

AFTERWORD

A statement about anything physical becomes a statement about its presence. I react to void and barrier.

It was empty. It was hollow. I was not apart, looking at it. I was in it. I was in a hole in the ground. Inhabited space transcends geometrical space.

Anything is only a part of where it is.

Michael Heizer qtd. in Brown, Julia, editor. Michael Heizer: Sculpture in Reverse. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1984.
Dwan, Virginia. “Double Negative: A Recollection” (1983) qtd. in ibid.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press, 1994.

…coyotes, pumas, mesquite, scorpions, AEC research and test center, nature pyramid, kangaroo rats, squirrels, cultural phototroposis, quail, Ruth pit, carp, faro wheel, 87% land government ownership, hot springs, mule deer, sidewinders, Great Basin, open speed limits, gila monsters, eagles, manganese, creosote, horned toads, rhyolite, wild horses, Yucca Flat, centipedes, herons, joshua, antimony, hawks, greatest U.S. state transient population, uranium, black widows, copper, diatomite, owls, petroglyphs, sulfur, mountain lions, showboat, tungsten, cindercones, gold tarantulas, diamondbacks, chapparal, silver, coral snakes, gypsum, willows, playas, foxes, crows, pine, octillo, barite, Indian reservations, buckhorn, F-111’s, prairie dogs, vultures, Boulder Dam, roadrunners, geysers, pelicans, timber rattlers, sand, titanium, javelinas, cholla, county optioned prostitution, yucca, turtles, tufa, blackjack, seagulls, basalt, nuclear munitions stockpile, molybdenum, drift shafts, Las Vegas, jackrabbits, bobcats, one member U.S. House of Representative, Sierra Nevada (solid granite), sinkholes, bats, sage, mudflats, Mormon tea, silica, frogs, potential SST landing strip, seven mile tunnel, mackinaw, juniper, kildeer, rodeo horses, cottonwoods, lizards, cattle, legalized gambling, only architecturally uniform U.S. city, feldspar, bombing ranges, wolves, granodiorite, borate, thorium, antelope…

Michael Heizer qtd. in Brown, Julia, editor. Michael Heizer: Sculpture in Reverse. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1984.

I didn’t want to make objects.

I was interested in massive objects as well as the absence of objects.

Material was removed rather than accumulated.

IMAGE CREDITS

• top: Author
• section II: unr.edu
• section III: Brode, Harold L. “Thermal Radiation from Nuclear Explosions.” The RAND Corporation, 1963.
• section VI: Crescent Dunes. Solar Reserve.
• section IX: Berardini, Andrew. “Michael Heizer’s Double Negative: A Journey to a Land Art Landmark.” LA Weekly, 16 August 2012.
• Afterword, top image: Five Conic Displacements, photograph from Brown, Julia, editor. Michael Heizer: Sculpture in Reverse. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1984.
• Afterword, bottom image: Sedan Crater (foreground), National Nuclear Security Administration. Nevada Test Site Guide, 1 March 2005,
• …coyotes…, top image: Double Negative under construction, photograph from Brown, Julia, editor. Michael Heizer: Sculpture in Reverse. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1984.
• …coyotes…, bottom image: Grable test, May 25, 1953, National Nuclear Security Administration. Nevada Test Site Guide, 1 March 2005,