Time Travel

I am beginning to time travel.

Aren’t we all, at this time of year?

I am not in my body any more, I am in some other body, sprinkled between the months, thinking about flights and cranberries and gifts and weather and demands and missing people and holiday cheer and it is a little like a self-cremation.

I am thinking about time travel especially because I am visiting a building, the Integratron, on January 1st of the New Year, at noon, that was reputedly designed by aliens from Venus and that claims to support time travel. This is an experience not on offer in Washington, DC.

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My friend Johnny and I are flying out to spend time in the California desert with our friends Anne-Louise and Tyler, near Joshua Tree National Park. Anne and Johnny are both painters; as teenagers, we used to spend wonderful lazy days on the levee by the Mississippi, just sweating and letting the ants get in our warm beer and writing and painting and talking. If there’s a heaven, that’s it for me.

I guess we’re time traveling back in time, or trying to, by getting together again. It’s dangerous, sometimes, to attempt this kind of time travel. You have to be willing to layer — leave the past alone, like a ragged t-shirt, and wear the scratchy sweaters of our current selves on top of it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I think it’ll work.

Anne paints a lot of animals. Here’s one of her cheetah paintings.

I’ve started looking at mammals forums to get a sense of the Joshua Tree fauna. It seems like it’s mostly rodents, bats, and the coyotes who eat them, but what I’m loving right now is the absolute enthusiasm for the rodents that I’m reading on the mammal forum.

Kangaroo Rat. Source: Wikipedia, Public Domain.

I understand it’s a mammal forum. Of course people are into it. But they are at level 11 on a scale of 1-10 y’all. They are staying up all night for the mice. They are spending days on a kangaroo rat hunt. These are people who think nothing of “jumping on a plane for a day trip” in order to see a long-tailed weasel, and are only stopped when they’re told that the weasels have moved on. They call their failure to see the weasel the “stuff of legend.”

Long-tailed Weasel. Source: Wikipedia, Public Domain.

Long-tailed Weasel with a Vole. Source: Wikipedia, Public Domain.

If you have ever thought to yourself, “hmm, I wonder if I’m getting too into my hobby,” the answer is no. Absolutely not. Take it to 11. Take it to 100. Think about the people willing to spend all night in an ice-cold desert in order to see a mouse with a slightly longer tail and wear that costume, build that Lego empire. We gottchu.

The point is, my cremated ashes that are already floating through the desert right now are getting fired up. (Moreso than they already were, I guess.) They are ready to go. Weasels are the target animal? Sure, I can go all out on weasels. Suddenly I’m looking up mouse markings. Suddenly I’m into bats.

You tell me that kangaroo rats are out there beating up their snake predators?

And that this kangaroo rat made David Attenborough — THE David Attenborough — cool his globe-trotting heels until it was good and ready for its closeup. (I mean, I love Attenborough too, but I also kind of love the gall on this rat.)

And also that there’s two — count ‘em, two — kinds of kangaroo mice as well as the kangaroo rats?

Pale Kangaroo Mouse. Source: WIkipedia, Public Domain.

It sounds like a mini-pogo stick championship every night. It sounds like a rodent/reptile disco. I can’t wait.

I’m thinking about hiring a guide, the guide that apparently can find the weasels if they’re around. (I’d also be quite into seeing bobcats, but I think they might be too far away to get to them easily.)

The other part of the visit to the Integration — besides, of course the time travel — is the sound bathing. I haven’t done it yet, so I don’t know exactly, but apparently you lie on mats in this building designed by a Lockheed aeronautical engineer and who also received instructions from aliens for a particular frequency for rejuvenating living cell tissues. While lying there, crystal bowls will be played at this correct frequency. 

I’m looking forward to coming back together. I’m looking forward to being in the present, in the desert, with the mice, and maybe even a weasel or two who knows.

Do you have any travel plans coming up? Any plans that might involve wildlife — even wildlife in your own backyard? (Mice count, obviously!) Feel free to leave a comment, and have a wanderful week.

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I should also mention a new addition to my Substack publication: the WanderFinder subscriber chat. I am loving it, and we’ve already had a few fun discussions with it, but I should mention one thing up top: it only works on the Apple (iOS) app. It doesn’t work yet with the Android app.

Substack says they’re working on getting the Android app up and running ASAP, but feel free to drop them a line if you’d like to encourage their progress.

So, what is the chat? It’s kinda like a group chat just for WanderFinder subscribers. I’m hoping to post on there all the neat nature stuff that comes up during the week and that there just isn’t room for in the weekly posts.

So far we’ve already talked about the Folger Library’s Birds of Shakespeare project and this request from the National Park Service to stop licking the toads.

To join our chat, you’ll need to download the Substack app (messages are sent via the app, not email). Turn on push notifications so you don’t miss a chance to join conversation as it happens.

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How to get started

1. Download the app by clicking this link or the button below. Chat is only on iOS for now, but chat is coming to the Android app soon.

2. Open the app and tap the Chat icon. It looks like two bubbles in the bottom bar, and you’ll see a row for my chat inside.

3. That’s it! Jump into my thread to say hi, and if you have any issues, check out Substack’s FAQ.

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Thanks so much, and hope you all have a wanderful week!