Nevada, the state where i find myself – home of the Nevada Test site, much further to the south, seemingly far from here, but in stones throw of the major city in this state, one that boomed more recently, but now a bust, a continuation of the cycle here, the boom and bust, mining towns, gambling, nothing to be sustained. In the land, this ‘great basin’ are remnants of another ancient time, a time where life thrived, now visible in the rock that makes up the landscape, above and below. Memories of eons gone by, of other life forms captured in the stone, still lingering on, transformed, but not gone.
i read a book, Savage Dreams, by Rebecca Solnit, she who reveals the mystery and history of the lands in written words. The Nevada Test site, it still remains, no longer a testing ground for nuclear weapons, ‘forgotten’ by many, or in the recesses of our minds – tours now pass through, but what was done there remains with us and for how long, It is less than 20 years ago that the last know nuclear test took place underground in 1992, but how long will its effects remain with us – the explosions that ripped apart the earth, leaving behind a chamber filled with radioactive rubble. The last test, of 928 that are known in this locale. After about 100 nucleur bombs were exploded in the air for all to see, the radioactivity carried far upon the winds, and deposited upon the surface of the land, they were moved underground after 1962, and while out of sight, they could not remain hidden away.
Over the next 30 years, the ground shook, craters were made, radioactivity pumped into the ground, as testing continued, not only in the seemingly dead rocky ground, but a third of them in aquifers, the precious water deposits that were life, and some even further down into the depths of our mother. A time of peace camps and protests, how i once wanted to be there, of people speaking out, calling attention to what was happening there.
With the cold war a distant memory, this too seems in the distant past. But how much of it is with us today, what lingering effects in out bodies and in our lands, to remain for tens of thousands of years, leaching out, hidden, but when to be revealed, like the fossils and what relics we find in these lands, forgotten but never really gone away. In our cultural amnesia, the online world, the FB newsfeed, a blip of information, and then it is gone, forgotten, as we move onto the next thing, the next urgent matter, but like the data stored, never knowing when a statement made years ago will come to bite us in the back, a small thing, forgotten but never gone away.
i feel the ancients in this land, layers of history, and what layers do we leave behind, what energies are lurking beneath.
