Among the mountains, before the highway curves and splits and rises to where it tosses you out into the vast California desert, sits an unremarkable place called Phelan. Like many unremarkable places, Phelan has a gas station.
I slid out of my seat and into the hazy California sunshine. From the edge of the gas station lot I took in the unspectacular, hemmed-in view of the surrounding hills.
The desert is not something I grew up with. And while I’d driven this way a few times before, for all the nothingness there was still novelty here.
Spread over the vast landscape around Phelan was Angeles National Forest, with views of Ontario Peak and Bighorn Peak and Timber Mountain. Iron Mountain and Rattlesnake Peak were out there somewhere too, along with the Bridge to Nowhere, spanning the San Gabriel River as part of a road that was washed away by a flood and never rebuilt. Off to the east were Lake Arrowhead and Big Bear Lake. Silverwood Lake, California’s highest reservoir at a thousand meters above sea level, sat right up Route 138. The lake sits on the West Fork Mohave River, not far from the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs for 2,653 miles from the Mexican to the Canadian border.
Standing there in the Chevron lot I knew none of these names and trivial details. Only later would I learn about all the things we were passing by. All the things I was missing.
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