its bitter, useless waters, 3
Salton Sea, ca 1961-62
J, C, M.
V behind camera; P seated offstage to the right.
T toddling nearabouts.
a shrinking sea.
Always the train kept sliding downward, downward. ¶ A sliver of blue, strange in the desert, slit the blond sand beneath the base of the right-hand mountain range, then widened into a lake, a long, narrow, shining lake... For miles and miles the train skirted its shore... She knew that this desert-fringed lake must be the Salton Sea... She knew that she was more than two hundred and fifty feet below the level of the sea and that she was about to enter the strange new country for which she was bound, itself in long-past ages a part of the sea bed, the land that the Indians had called the hollow of God's hand. ¶ The twilight was thickening fast.
ex Edith Summers Kelley (1884-1956 *), The Devil's Hand (abandoned 1926, published 1974) / *
—
its bitter, useless waters (1-8), all
tags: Edith Summers Kelley; deserts; memory; Salton Sea; water