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LESLIE'S JOURNAL |
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| Date: 1st May
| Time: around 11pm | Place: Meredith & Noah's | |||
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Today we saw another geological wonder - a massive crater in the middle of the Arizona desert, conveniently right on Route 66. The age and scale of these natural phenomena are strange in comparison to our feelings towards the road itself, which we regard as old and as a piece of history though it was laid little over 70 years ago and was only decommissioned in the mid-eighties. But the crater has been there 50,000 years, by all accounts. In the sixties, when 66 was in its heyday, the crater was used as a training ground for astronauts, so it is something of an arrival as well as a departure platform between our planet and space. It was uncanny standing there today after having stared up at the comet so intensely last night at the Grand Canyon. The truth is that we stopped at the meteor crater largely because we were headed to 'Meteor City', population 2, a town/gift shop consisting of one couple, Dale and Judy, who run a moccasin store in a giant geodesic dome out in the desert. We stopped to chat and exchanged some Sainsburyıs bramble jam for some Sonora Desert Red Chili Jelly and thought we might leave things at that, when Dale produced two blank postcards and said, 'Send these to whoever you want in the world.' Helen and I paused to make sure we had understood correctly. 'And then when you get where ever youıre going, send one to us if you want to.' We thought this sounded like a great idea and agreed enthusiastically. Then Dale led us over to a section of the dome wall (no corners in a dome) and showed us his collection of postcards from all over the world, with a large world map displayed amongst them, hundreds of brightly colored map pins marking the different places they receive post from. Out in the desert in a town consisting only of themselves and their huge dome, Dale and Judy collect evidence not only of all the international travelers who pass through, but of where these people go after they disappeared from Meteor City. This sounded strangely like our project in reverse. We leave traces of ourselves and collect evidence as we travel, Dale and Judy let the world come to them. |
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