The long, bumping van ride reminds me of the Peruvian hiway into the jungle. The pothole devastated road required the driver to continually veer to & fro in a vain attempt to align his path over the dwindling minority remaining of the road. It didn’t seem to help. Perhaps it was some technique he had developed to fling our momentum out horizontally in some way dampening our constant vertical thrust. The ride was a long enough that going slow wasn’t an option. At some point we passed a cnstruction crew, repairing the road one hole at a time. The futility of their effort didn’t stop us from spontaneously leaning out the window & cheering them on maniacally. The “road” was lined with fires that went deep into the jungle and rose high into the sky, obscuring the sun with lightening filled clouds. Ominous & foreboding.
But New Mexico is a long way from Peru. We’re four out of five days in on a shoot in nw nm filming in the alien landscape of the Bisti Badlands. Millions of years have eroded this once underwater dinosaur graveyard into the anomalous forms called ‘hoodoos’. Stunning and (cough, cough) dusty. Giant dust devils spontaneously appear and disappear, leaving destruction in their wake. Amazing and absurd, this process of movie making. Hard to imagine the place surviving our impact.
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