I’ve been sleeping in a tent for the last eight or nine days. Now staying at a friend’s house in Phoenix. To recap some of my experiences …
You are looking at Salvation Mountain, in Slab City – a testimony to one man’s devotion to Jesus. Leonard Knight worked on the mountain – hay bales, adobe, paint, and who knows what – from 1984 till his death in 2014. Truly, this is a sacred site.
The guy on the motorcycle is Alvin, who showed me around. I was hoping to pitch a tent in Slab City, an experiment in alternative living built on the remains of a former military installation. But I was looking at garbage everywhere, from household waste dumped under trees to abandoned fridges and stoves and vehicles and such.
Here is one of the more palatable sights from within Slab City.
Instead, I pitched my tent down and across the road a bit, on mostly empty desert, within sight of the sacred Salvation Mountain. Ah, glorious peace …