Hoover Dam

The Hoover Dam is a striking sight, to be sure. When it first looms into view, the dam jokes we are making ("I'm going to use the dam bathroom" "Let's take some dam pictures." "Where's the dam parking lot?") actually cease for a few minutes.

Tons upon tons of concrete wedged there between breathtaking gorges and clear blue-green water. Now with the added scenic value of the Hoover Dam bypass, arching across your vision, if you hadn't yet had enough reminder of the ability of people to create massive civil engineering projects with graceful curves in the middle of the desert. Named after Mike O'Callaghan and Pat Tillman...the plaque does NOT mention how the latter was killed by friendly fire.

The memorializations at the Dam are more thorough. The hundred-odd that died in the construction get a golden plaque of an Art-Deco looking Adonis rising up through the waves to hold his hands up, gesturing at the glory of sheafs of wheat. "They Died to Make the Desert Bloom." It is rather Soviet looking, the way that a lot of public works art from that era always look to me. A guide points out helpfully to his group "If you look closely, you can see drowned faces in the waves." Lovely.

It is pretty darn decorated bit of civil engineering. Humongous angels guard the flag pole, FDR stares down at you, daring you not to be impressed, and even the elevators get carvings. I'm a little fixated though on the star map below my feet. It's set so that without any other means of calculation, future generations, or extraterrestrials will be able to find the exact location of the pole star, and thus know the exact date that the dam was dedicated.

Hubris much?

It's not surprising to me that people out here would try to speak in the language of stars. Later that evening, it's our first night out in the real middle of nowhere, far from the lights of Vegas, and I see more stars than anywhere else I've ever been.

Not much more than a decade later, the honor of the shit that aliens would theoretically most be proud of that we did was changed over to our splitting the atom for weaponized purposes. Which occurred relatively close to here actually. They used to throw bomb detonation watching parties in Las Vegas.

In a little reminder of the interconnectedness that exists in history if you look close enough,

the town we were last in existed in part because of this public works projects. Las Vegas was hardly Sin City, more like Frowned-at Watering Hole until workers on this dam started daytripping up there to get their fill of gambling, drink and women while on break. The builders founded a more nearby city, Boulder City where the workers were supposed to stay, but to little effect. One wonders if any of the drowning faces the guide pointed out on the plaque had their fatal incaution brought on by a Las Vegas hangover. And nowadays, of course, Lost Wages has to power all that neon somehow.

A fitting introduction to the vast scenery we would soon be seeing, and how even the most ambitiously huge of structures can seem like anthills out there.

We felt so cowboyish that we even came up with the silly cowboy names I've been using for us this whole travelogue. Riding through the desert under a gigantic sky, in a Nissan instead of on a horse. Tumbleweed, Butterscotch, Snake-Eyes and me...Blitzen.