This Must be the Place Again

Postcard from a writer's retreat in Pioneertown. New daily readers. Raymond Carver.

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When I have fantasies about leaving Los Angeles or cities altogether, the place that I usually end up is near an ocean. Technically, I’m only a 20-minute drive from the ocean now, but for some strange, uniquely LA reason, it feels hundreds of miles away. My close-to-water fantasy is more about convenience: I’d like to wake up and whip open a door inches from a beach surrounded by a calm sea. If pressed for other idyllic locales to escape to forever, I guess I could name a few more. Maybe someplace mountainous but in more European and less Appalachian. Same goes for woods. Another option at this stage in life: somewhere on the East Coast and American, blissfully suburban with a big green yard full of fluffy snow in winter and bug zappers and a chilly in-ground pool in summer.

One place I’d never put on that list? The desert. Never saw the appeal. I spent a few hours in Joshua Tree once, a little more than eight years ago, but never had a strong desire to go back to it. I sat on some rocks. Stared at the sun. Walked enough to realize that walking through the desert was not an activity I enjoyed.

A couple of years ago, I received an invitation from Lisa Mecham, an artist, writer, and longtime TSB reader, to come to her part of the desert in Pioneertown and use her cabin if I ever wanted a place to get away and write. It sounded intriguing, but I also never felt qualified to use it if I didn’t have a big project to work on, like, for example, a book.

I’ll also add that I never saw myself as a person who needed to go somewhere else to write. I’ve been so productive with the dogs and the kids in constant earshot and accustomed to getting work done at odd hours because that is how my life is structured right now. (The sentence you just read was written a couple hours ago at 1:05 a.m)

But once a book began to take shape, I realized maybe a couple of days away would be beneficial — I was rounding out a first section and wanted to wrap it up before the end of the summer. I don’t feel like I’m in jeopardy of missing a deadline — I’m trying to enjoy the process, and waking up at 5 a.m. a couple of times per week to dip into it has produced enough work I’m happy with. One part I have purposely been avoiding, though — the actual month I was in St. Petersburg, Florida, to serve as a defendant for the Hogan v. Gawker trial, which I’ve talked about agonized over and processed in this newsletter since its inception. It was time, though. So I went to the desert.