Just east of the Edwards Air Force Base, a tall girl in a pink bra, yellow short shorts, and long brown legs stands in front of the Texaco station, blowing kisses at the traffic. Six soldiers in desert camo march down the center of Route 58. Further up the road, a grinning sunburnt and shoeless man with a mangy dog on a rope sits on a plastic red gas container with a box of wine at his feet. In the Mojave desert, you can drive 140 miles without any sign of life, nothing but an endless horizon of baked sand and twisted Joshua trees and then you’ll come across an intersection like this.

I flip on the radio and somebody says that the lost city of Atlantis was found under the South China Sea. The Mojave is the perfect place to bathe in conspiracy theories. Pieces of jets and tanks litter the floor of the desert. The lights from some of the world’s largest military installations glint in the distance and the names out here are epic, front-loaded with intrigue: The Inland Empire. The High Desert. China Lake. Twentynine Palms. BAE Systems. ASB Avionics. Alpha Dyna Nobel. XCor Aerospace. Derringer. Combat Barber II: Military Haircuts.

In the Mojave, wicked security jeeps appear from nowhere and threaten to take your camera. Or you’ll make a wrong turn and start seeing signs that say things like Warriors Supporting Warriors or Don’t Let the Dragon Win or Things to do when you return: 1. Put your baby to sleep. 2. Have — with your wife. I first came out here out three years ago and I keep returning for the strange combination of the ultramundane, the beautiful heat, and the unnerving atmosphere. Spaceships land here.

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Mojave 3 – Prayer for the Paranoid
from Excuses for Travellers. 4AD, 2000 | buy it