Once again, I have gone deep into the desert for my annual writing retreat. I’ll spend the next 16 days in a couple of rooms, writing, reading, listening to music, meditating. I’ll cook myself simple meals in the galley kitchen. With a few necessary exceptions (obtaining food supplies and the like), I’ll go out only in the cool predawn hours. Away from the distractions of my home, I’ll be able to clarify my thinking and choose a productive direction for the year ahead.

Why yes, I’m in Las Vegas. And no, I am not alone. I’m sharing the hotel room with Alan, who is here to play poker, and I am sure that we will not limit our activities to poker (him) and writing (me).

But the rest is true, too. My forays into Sin City are generally a lot closer in spirit to the Desert Fathers than, say, late-stage Elvis. Assuming any Desert Father had a comfortable bed, something to read, and an iPod.

We started after midnight, in the early hours of Monday morning. The roads were nearly empty. Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark on the CD player, followed by the first couple discs of Citizen Steely Dan. Then Chris Squire in an album I hadn’t heard before, and we talked about progressive rock.

We stopped for a meal at 3AM — scrambled eggs and tea served in a ceramic pot that miraculously did not drip. I loathe those cheapjack aluminum teapots with the ill-fitting flat lids. The ones that spill half the tea on the table.

At a Denny’s off I-5 near Coalinga: A small black-and-white truckstop cat is patrolling the strips of grass and shrubs, hunting the mice that feed on dropped munchies.

Despite the caffeine in the tea, I fell back to sleep as soon as I got in the car.

Heading east from Bakersfield toward Tehachapi. (Pronounced Teh-HATCH-a-pee.) Torn-paper hills and a sky paling toward sunrise. Quarter moon at zenith.

Me: I know Bakersfield is universally regarded as ugly, but these hills [oak-dotted, east of the town] are gorgeous.

The hawks were hunting in the pre-dawn stillness. I put on Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run and mentioned to Alan that the title song had once been seriously nominated as the official anthem of New Jersey youth.

Alan You mean by the state?

Me: Yeah. I guess they couldn’t figure out what the lyrics meant.

Ridge after ridge of wind turbines. Alan says: Don Quixote, eat your heart out.

As we reached the high desert, the dawn bloomed brilliantly pink and clear. Mojave and Marvin Gaye’s Number One Hits. Oh yes.

California towns that sound like Discworld troll gods: Monolith, Boron. Boron would be god of duty and etiquette. Or paperwork.

We passed the turnoff for Twenty-Mule Team Road in Boron, CA. Then we stopped for gas, and I took over the driving. The roads were relatively level here, mostly straight, still almost deserted. The only risk (other than falling asleep at the wheel from sheer boredom) was that there was so little close-in scenery — so few landmarks to measure one’s progress — that even 80 mph felt slow. I eased back on the throttle whenever I noticed we were at 90.

Even at that speed, I kept an eye on geology. The Mojave, the high desert, is not much like the iconic deserts: the sand dunes and palms of the Sahara, or the wind-scoured rocky Garden of the Gods, familiar from a thousand Road Runner cartoons.

The granite hills were weathered into fantastic shapes: knifelike serrated ridges, curves, pillars, volutes, needles, as fanciful as chocolate meringue. (The occasional volcanic cinder cone blended right in.) The ridges rise randomly from drifts of weathered dry ravel, like icebergs in the sea. Fat round cushions of sagebrush are scattered over the level valley floor, and the spiky Joshua trees, which look like clustered bottle brushes.

Then I asked Alan to put on an Oliver Messiaen CD he’d brought. I like Messiaen a lot, but I hadn’t heard his Quartet for the End of Time, written and first performed in a Nazi POW camp. The quartet instruments–piano, cello, violin, clarinet–were what the imprisoned musicians happened to play and the camp had available. Spare, complex, demanding, with moments of unexpected beauty. Rather like the high desert, in fact.

Last year we drove through Yosemite on the way down, and I made a spontaneous sunrise excursion that landed me in Calico Canyon. This time we’ll be here for the new moon, and I want very much to go out into the desert to look at the stars in true darkness.

I brought a stack of books and the entire Internet with me, and I’ve been stuffing my laptop with CDs. I also want and need to get a good bit of work done. I am also planning to stop by the Clark County Library book sale, where I bought a box and a half of books last year for an indecently low price. It’s the best used bookstore in town.

I am planning to continue my record of never having wagered a cent in Las Vegas. I don’t play poker anyway, Casinos have too much cigarette smoke and too many random perfumes for my allergic, asthmatic self, although I like the decorations — Chihuly flower ceilings, giant aquaria, white tiger cats sporting in waterfalls, fountains pretending to be volcanoes, and duplicates of classical statues that I’ll never get to Europe to see.

So. The adventure begins.