camminando | Nevada Desert: Looking for Somebody Else's Art and Creating My Own

It does not take more than fifteen miles to leave the greatest extravaganza on the planet where everything is a re-creation of something else, namely Las Vegas. And then you get to the barren desert, cut by the multi-lane interstate highway I15.
Almost as going to a pilgrimage I am headed to visit "Double Negative", the 1969 earthwork by Michael Heizer. The site is not different from the overall Nevada desert; located in the the town of Overton, in the Moapa Valley. Direction are quite clear as a dirty road takes us to the towering Mormon Mesa. Then the desert becomes really deserted. We leave the car and armed with water bottles and sun lotion we adventure toward the eroding earthwork. We did not find it. But the view of majestic mesa overlooking the Virgin River has almost a cathartic effect. I forget all the tension and upsets of the past months. I am walking with the sand blown into my face by a wind gusting at over 30 mph. The Mesa shows the wind impact with its implacable erosion. Yet the fierce desert wind seems to heal. At least for a few hours. 
We are not able to find Heizer's earthwork. But our walk was an art expression on its own, bringing a healing quiet.