Few and Far Between

That we are so few and far between in this remote rural area of the Great Basin Desert profoundly conditions our modes of communication, increasing our dependence upon each other even as it intensifies the isolation we have chosen in coming here to dwell. Our challenge is to affirm the bonds of mutual aid to have them ready in times of blizzard and wildfire, while simultaneously protecting each other’s elaborate fantasies of independence. This is more difficult than it might sound, and it accounts for the ubiquity of discussions of the weather, without which my neighbors and I—there are only a few of us strung along this terrible, 2.3-mile road snaking through the sage and juniper hills—would have a rough time getting along. We are all isolatoes here, distinguished by our reclusiveness, but also by our generosity in helping each other when the need arises. 

The dominant ethic on our remote road—the key to preserving harmony in our little desert kingdom—is unflinching, stoical restraint. One of my neighbors will use his tractor to repair our road after a storm, but not if we embarrass him by talking about it, never mind if we were to insult him by offering money. Another will plow you out after a big snow, but not if you ask or expect him to. Above all, we adhere strictly to the cardinal rule that there is to be no discussion of anything outside the immediacy of our shared local circumstances: weather, animals, and plants are allowed; religion, politics, and economics are not. What each of us does to make a living in the distant city is vaguely known and never spoken of. The fact that ninety-eight percent of topics common to human social discourse are strictly off limits necessitates conversations that are delicate and exceedingly brief. And that’s just how we like it.

This ethic of restrained communication may be seen in the greetings we offer each other as we drive along our rutted, rural road—greetings that are confined entirely and inflexibly to the wheel wave. That is, we lift one or more fingers off the steering wheel of our trucks as we roll by each other in the mud, dust, or snow. This is a rich and subtle form of communication, with a complex variety of nuanced, unwritten rules, but I’d summarize this way. You lift only your pointer finger off the wheel for a routine howdy to a neighbor. Raising the pointer and middle fingers in the two-fingered salute is appropriate when greeting a truck carrying kids or old people, but it is best to flash the fingers at an oblique angle to avoid having it be misunderstood as a peace sign—which, in a sideways sort of way, it is. Under no circumstances do you ever allow your palm to leave the wheel, which would be a greeting so effusive and emotional—so perfectly hysterical—that anyone foolish enough to display such a shameless loss of self-control would never recover the respect of their neighbors.

What is it about this desert that causes us to greet each other without so much as lifting our palm from the steering wheel? How is it that, in a world brimming over with interminable chatter and incessant social media, we Silver Hillbillies became so reserved? Maybe we worry that spouting words might leave us vulnerable to dehydration, or that the act of speaking might cause us to shed layers that provide a defense against hypothermia. Or is there simply so much space between us that we surprise each other when we meet and are struck with an aphasia induced by the expansiveness of the landscape itself? Or perhaps we hesitate to speak because everything we say must be shouted into the desert wind, which sweeps our words away to Utah—or, when the Washoe Zephyr quarters from the southwest, to Idaho. So, we clench our teeth to avoid eating dust and for a more practical reason: to hold our souls in good and tight. 

The unusual restraint that characterizes wheel waving may be related to the larger question of how we desert dwellers are influenced by the extraordinary land we inhabit. I am fascinated by the proposition that people who dwell in any physical environment long enough are inevitably and profoundly shaped by it. Out here in the Great Basin, we are buffeted by uncontrollable natural forces—from drought, wind, and blizzard to flash flood, earthquake, and wildfire. But we are also deeply affected by the crisp, thin air and the unique quality of the light, by the vastness of the dark skies, by the unforgiving openness of the landscape and the immense quiet it engenders. Even on a calm day, a wind-canted juniper embodies the raw force of the Zephyr; even when desiccated, an arroyo expresses the explosive power of a flash flood. In a similar sense, learning to live in the high desert might be described as the slow, humbling process of coming to realize how the high desert also lives in us. Dwelling in the arid West has made us like the desert flowers, which have survived long enough in this wind to have learned the silent value of keeping a low profile.

The complex, invisible protocol for wheel waving constitutes an interactive social symbol system that, like other kinds of coded language, appears mysterious to outsiders but is highly functional for those of us who employ it. In a world full of noise, ambiguity, miscommunication, obfuscation, and deceit, this system is crystalline in its clarity, elegant in its simplicity and directness. You might object that the desert, so dry, has made us dry as well, and you may wonder if the wheel wave is a human-scale gesture on the order of the more demonstrative greetings that are regularly exchanged in town. And yet, in a high desert landscape so full of space, light, and wind and so empty of confusion, misunderstanding, and clamor, a sideways peace sign is all we need, at least until the next wildfire or blizzard sweeps in.

An earlier version of this essay appeared as part of a chapter in Mike’s book How to Cuss in Western: And Other Missives from the High Desert (Roost Books, 2018).