Flash Under the Milkyway

It was on a Thursday, riding to work when I had a small panic attack realizing that the summer solstice was yesterday. Not something normally that... more

by David Andersen

Title

Flash Under the Milkyway

Artist

David Andersen

Medium

Photograph

Description

It was on a Thursday, riding to work when I had a small panic attack realizing that the summer solstice was yesterday. Not something normally that would insight anxiety, but I had planned on going out to the Sun Tunnels on or around the solstice and it just dawned on me that I almost missed it.

The first time I went out to the tunnels was in May…almost sad in a way. I am fifty-two and never ventured out to see the landart that had been there since my pre-teen years. Though it is in the middle of nowhere it is estimated, though there is really no way of verifying, that over two million people have visited them. Earlier that year I had bought, but not yet taken possession of, a brand new Honda Africa Twin motorcycle, the subject of perhaps another writing. While I waited for it to come I researched and I found that I needed a 300 mile break-in period. I decided to do that all at once and the Sun Tunnels seemed like a good destination to exceed that mark, giving me a variety of back roads, freeway and dirt roads. I had planned on it tentatively for months. When the new bike came I asked Brandon if he wanted to speed out to see the Sun Tunnels.with me, and though he is always up for a ride, he didn’t seem too excited about our destination. After all, it is 160 miles to some man-made tunnels in the desert. But there is just something about massive nine-foot diameter eighteen-foot long cement tubes set up in a criss-cross pattern in the middle of nowhere to peak your interest. After a non-optimal mid-afternoon photo shoot of motorcycles through the tubes, we went on to the Salt Flats, another 57 miles straight south.

The Sun Tunnels are landart structures by Nancy Holt, completed in 1976 in the West Desert of the Great Basin in Utah. Four tunnels laid out in an X pattern. Two tunnels line up with the summer solstice setting sun and winter solstice rising sun and two line up with the summer solstice rising sun and winter solstice setting sun. There are holes bored through the sides to represent the constellations of Draco, Perseus, Columbia, and Capricorn though they don’t actually line up with said constellations.

On that Thursday, by the time I got to work I had a plan. Brandon was more excited about the destination this time. We both left work a little early, gathered up our gear and hit the road.

When we got to Snowville, our last chance for gas and grub, I paused to figure mileage and found that to go to the tunnels and then return to Snowville, I would be right on the edge of my maximum range for the gas in my tank. I could just see us putting out of gas ten miles out of town. We bought a gas can and found a way to strap it on just in case.

A woman who had been camping there all week told us there were about eighty people there the day before on the actual solstice. I was glad I missed it. The tunnels didn’t know we were off by a day, and for this crowd hater, it was better because that night it was just us two, the camping woman and a mother and daughter who came and slept in their suburban. I didn’t have to shoot over or around or wait or get in the way of others trying to capture the brief moment when the sun hits the horizon shining down the tubes. Brandon picked a morning tunnel to sleep in because it blocked the wind instead of funneling it, which left me with the one in the same line across from it, The wind whistled all night and I could hear an occasional train running the same route as in the day they made the Lucin Cutoff and abandoned the tracks that joined at the historical Promontory Summit.

My motorcycle doesn’t have a reserve switch, but it does tell me when I hit 0.8 gallons and starts an estimated mileage to you’ll-be-pushing-the-bike or begging-for-gas mark. At eleven miles to empty, I read a sign that said fourteen miles of open range. I wondered if the open range went right up to Snowville or if we were further than that away. At the ten miles to hitchhiking, it goes blank like saying: I am not going to commit to an exact number, I am not going to count down to feet, I’ve warned you and warned you ‘til I am blue in the face and I am done warning you, well, except for the little flashing light. Get some gas already!. We pushed the limit even though we had a couple of gallons of gas strapped on, just to see, and we made it. I don’t know if I had ten more feet worth of fumes in there.

It was a great one day adventure. I stayed up until midnight taking shots of the Milky Way over the tunnels, listened to the wind and the trains most of the shortest night of the year, got up at dawn to shoot the sunrise and made it back to work by 10:00. I could hardly keep my eyes open all day.

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December 14th, 2017