Five miles east of the Democratic Headquarters, this lovely truck adorns a horse pasture next to the highway. I don't know who owns or who embellished it, but I am told that it has stood guard there since 911.

Then I spent one long afternoon on the Santa Fe tracks at Essex, photographing everything that came by until the sun went down.

Old Chief Sconchin of the Modocs chose not to fight the white man, but his younger brother and the other war chiefs overrode him. The Modoc war which followed was disastrous to Sconchin's people, half of whom had to share an Oregon reservation with their enemies, and the other half were shipped to Oklahoma in freezing cattle cars. Sconchin lived into his nineties on the reservation, and was a major source for recording the Modoc's traditional lore. Today, as if to atone for for the injustices done him, Sconchin's name has been given to many natural landmarks of the Medicine Lake Highlands.

The old cotton wagon is a relic of former days, a ghost of Steinbeck's California. It lies tipped over in a field next to a gaggle of fast-food restaurants just off I-5, in one of the most dusty, desertified reaches of the West Valley.

I have followed Furnace Creek's raven population around with a camera for years, with little success. They are very skillful at avoiding photography. Up close, they are marvels of beady eyes and iridescent feathers. At the usual range they are featureless black blots, or else have departed the picture between button-push and shutter-click.