Plains of small ponderosa and piñon pine trees. A lava landscape in slow pours that look as if they happened a short time ago. We are in West Central New Mexico in a town called Quemado. At the Largo Café we enjoy enchiladas (green chili always for me) and sopapillas. The waitress tells us to be careful driving at night because of the elks. Says she hit one recently that was as large as the one mounted on the wall of the café (see photo above). Largo is a classic on the road American experience: a watering spot for passing travelers, truckers, and locals to share stories (especially over a big breakfast of eggs and pancakes).
On the main street of town in a white building we are instructed to meet Robert, a rancher who will drive us to The Lightning Field (1977). Walter De Maria wanted visitors to fully experience the great space so we must spend 24 hours in a cabin (no more than 6 people are on the property). He also thought that isolation was the essence of Land Art. So off we go about an hour from that street deep into desolate country. Along the way, Robert picks up his mail from a lone mailbox, plainly stating, “Bills find you no matter where you are.” Miles later, stepping onto the ground at the cabin, it does not look promising. The earth is dry and cracked. It is tough to go looking for lightning during a drought. In fact, it is remarkable how little lightning does strike here in a typical year. But the cabin is comfortable and filled with Arts and Crafts furniture. I think I could live here. From horizon to horizon there are mountains, sky, and the lightning rods in the field. 400 stainless steel rods embedded in a concrete foundation, spaced 220 feet apart in a rectangular grid formation in an area 1 mile x 1 kilometer. They are of various lengths yet accurately measured so all the pointed upper tips lie at the same level on uneven ground. The book in the cabin on the specifics of the project, states that if a gigantic piece of glass were placed on top of the rods it would be perfectly balanced. As I walk through the immense field there are enormous anthills, jackrabbits, horny toad lizards, and an assortment of beetles. I watched the light’s effect on the poles. They seem to get slimmer, almost invisible by midday, slowly disappearing into the landscape. At sunset, they become distinct, edges are sharpened in the violet, blue, magenta sky as they slowly fade again. The rods catch the sun’s first radiant rays at sunrise. At night, the show is high above. The Milky Way stretches across the dark. There are countless shooting stars and passing satellites. The wind blows fast from the field.
I read De Maria is notorious for avoiding talking about his work. He believes that talking about art or explaining it is foolish. Living in The Lightning Field for a day and night was a captivating, sublime experience. The longer I stayed the more it beckoned. I was a little sad when Robert came to pick us up the following day. But just as we were leaving, a solitary pronghorn antelope slowly walked through the field.
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