William S. Burroughs dragged his habit around Mexico looking for just such a place as this. He would flit from barrio to colonias in search of a particular thing, an ostensibly simple, even inevitable thing, but for Burroughs, it was the one thing he could not find and that he needed most. Well, Burroughs wouldn’t flit really. He would more trudge. He would trudge in the cement shoes a junkie wears. And he would always leave. He would always leave because there was always something wrong, of human invention, also always, with every place he went. And whatever that thing was—artlessness, prevailing guile, danger—it would prevent him from attaining his Excalibur, his Holy Grail, his reuniting with Penelope. But upon cresting Rincon and turning up Weaver, The Hidalgo would come into view, and even before surveying the grounds, he would truly grok the size and vigor of the Joshua trees here, prompting perhaps a rumination on just what was their unique evolutionary advantage in this climate, and already the intimations of, “Hey, maybe, just maybe…” would start. And that would even be before his marvelment at the rock formations that somehow play logical and graceful host to mid-twentieth century gas pumps, automobile crank shafts and filling station signage. Eventually though, he would know this space here. What would be his, what he could expect from being here. What tomorrow would bring. I can so easily picture William S Burroughs stepping out of The Bottle House, as I did just now, and saying, “Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Now here is a place where a fellow could get some rest.”
