Salvation mountain
Salvation mountain.

I am not a firm believer in god or any thing simmilar. I am probably a non beliver. Still you cant but wonder if there is some thing out there. I had been heading for Slab city, knowing that salvation mountain was there in the vicinity. The weather had changed from this morning when I left sunny Joshua Tree national park and was now cloudy and overcast. It had been a mellow ride and I had driven around to the near by towns trying to find some Internet connection. (little did I know then that the best one was in Niland it self) When I finally found the road to Slab city, which by the way is in the middle of Niland, i soon saw the the mountain in the distance. I was thinking of driving past it, find me a spot to stay and come back the morning after. But as so often when you get the feeling you should not, I decided to stop there and then. It was strange. As soon as I stoped. The curtains in the sky started sliding to the side and before I knew there was this beautiful blue sky in the bakckground. The sun coming from a low angel as it was in the afternoon, shun a nice light on the mountain. With out hesitation I grabbed my camera and started snapping away.
It was then that this older man came walking to me. Bid me welcome and said he was just about to give some people a tour around the place. As I am not much for taking guided tours I at first said know thanks, but the little man was not listening and insisted on me following him. It was then when he said that he was going to explain how he had built it that I became eager to follow. Here he was the artist him self, ready to explain the wonders of his and gods artwork. As it is not his artwork he says, him being solely an instrument of god.
For 23 years more or less he has been working on this mountain of his. Using mostly things that he finds in the desert and things that are given to him. This is the perfect recycling I would think as he is using tires and windows from cars as well as hay bales and adobe for his work.
The big Irony of all this recycling and Leonardos salvation is that by building this mountain he probably rescued Slab city. There has been interest from private companies to use the slab and build some resort there. Government and army also had thought about building new facilities in Slab city. No wonder as Salton Sea at one time was very popular and the travel industry there was big, until environmental and ecological disasters wrecked every thing. Actually Salton Sea is an environmental disaster and one of those things where engineers have gone hammock in harvesting water and by that, changed the land through miscalculation.
Still mother nature adopted quickly and birds and fish where found there later, until the disaster struck and infection attacked both fish and birds.
But according to one story I heard it was the work of god and Leonardo that salvaged the Slabs. While working on the mountain, which mostly is build on the sand and adobe there, he has spilled so much paint into the ground that the cost of cleaning the area is to much for any body to consider.
The army gave him most of the paint he used at first and there by they ruined their own grounds for rebuilding the slabs.
Nobody really knows what drove the artist Leonardo to start building the Salva
- kristjan's blog
- Login or register to post comments
-
- kristjan's blog
- Login or register to post comments
-
