Not Me

Recently, we were invited up to visit new friends who have a vacation home in Lake Havasu City, AZ. When Lisa came home to propose the idea, I knew I had heard of Lake Havasu before but could not place its location in my mind. For the geographically challenged, like me, here is a brief introduction: Lake Havasu is a large reservoir behind Parker Dam on the Colorado River, on the border between California and Arizona. The lake's primary purpose is to store water for pumping into two aqueducts. However, semi-clad twenty somethings have found, for the last fifty years or so, another use for it: to drive fast, expensive boats without a boating license while drinking massive quantitities of beer. Not surprisingly, each week during the peak season at least one person is found dead, bloated, and decompossing somewhere in Lake Havasu?many weeks after being lost. Prior to our departure from San Diego, a miserably hot 325 mile drive, our friends, upon hearing of our trip to The Lake, said, ?Be careful.?

We spent the first night with our friends under the stars by a pool. It was a scorching 120 degrees at noon. Thankfully, the temperature drops at night, and so the cool breezes offered by the 95 degree oven air at 10 PM were welcome. The beers were flowing and no one had to piss for many hours because people live in a constant state of massive dehydration in Havasu. Our first day was no different for us.

At night on vacation when people are far away from their usual surroundings it is common, and somewhat cliché, to finally look up at the stars and comment on their multitude and splendor, and to simultataneously offer unflattering adjectives about a relationship with a corporate job, or some boss. The stars and the beers allow ones spirit to be free, and since everyone is in the presence of strangers, and slightly or impressively drunk, judgement is absent when people say, ?I hate my job and my boss is a you know what, but look at those stars, man!? Everyone is equal at moments like these.

Indeed, when we finally look up at the stars we realize how ridiculously small we are in comparison to a massive universe, and certainly how ridiculous, despite our professinoal or academic successes, our lives may have become, and how unfortunate our reporting relationships might be at the office. In some cases, people look up and contemplate other things, for example, why the hell would anyone move to Lake Havasu?

After my umpeeth Corona with no lime I am quite sure I began to hallucinate in the hot evening air. Not in a Grateful Dead sort of way, but close. I recall contemplating Robinson Jeffers, the famours Carmel Point, California poet and some of his major poems, particularly those that tell of the human race and its steadfast approach to screwing up the world. While driving in to Havasu, I could not help but think something was wrong here: people are inhabiting a place that seems uninhabitable.

In terms of genre, to some extent Jeffers is the same vein as two British dudes, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, both of whom were quite smart and well read, and rich, having sufficient time and money offered by Mum and Pops to hang out in nature seeking solace while criticizing the Industrial Revolution and humankind?s destruction of the natural world. They wrote some impressive pieces, all of which is widely studied in English departments worldwide today. Generally they are perceived as pioneers in Romantic literature, a form of art quite similar to its American counterpart, Trancendentalism (for example, Thoreau and Whitman). Jeffers also had rich parents, so he spent a great amount of time in nature, pondering God, and writing poetry, and the downward spiral of Western civilization.

Just earlier that day someone in our group was telling me about the history of Havasu and how in the mid-80s a huge lot by the lake was only $5000. Fast forward to today, and our host?s mildly impressive home could sell for $700,000, the lot for about $350,000 prior to home building costs (materials and labor). Economics 101 says that if there is demand and the supply is low, prices go up, and sellers control price (up to a point). Where is the demand coming from? Clearly, there is plenty of land, albeit occupied by insects and amphibious slithering things like lizards and snakes. Nothing about Havasu suggests a human could survive there without a pool, a second pool, a Lake, huge air conditioning devices, grocery stores (free air conditioning), and massive coolers filled with Corona and ICE. Get my point? This is a place for dinosaurs and armadillos and dead grass. Is this what Jeffers first noticed in Northern California?

I continued to contemplate the universe, occasionally witnessing the disolution of a meteriote in the atmosphere, while simultaneously re-filling my IV drip of saline solution to avoid deathly dehydration. I really couldn?t help wonder who would move to Lake Havasu where it?s 120 degrees from May through the end of September and pay huge coin to do so?

My mind was reeling, and I could find no other alternative than to say: ?Not me?