DESERT ORACLE

Mojave Desert rat Layne veers between the occult and the pedestrian in this mixed bag of essays.

For a fan of arid lands, the author’s heart is in the right place: He celebrates a Mojave Desert ecosystem that, though heavily gnawed at the edges, is protected such that it’s the second largest desert wilderness in the world. “Out here, beyond the robotic grip of a civilization in disarray and despair, I promise you will feel human again, if only for a little while,” he writes in a neo-Thoreauvian vein. Layne celebrates neighbors who live in his clime within sight of the Joshua trees of southern California, some anti-social, some criminal, some reptilian in their worship of the sun. The author is a card-carrying believer in the eldritch, writing about the “Sierra Highway Devil,” a local emanation of the chupacabra; and the vast underground lakes that, miners swear, lie deep beneath the ancient beds of Death Valley. Layne also looks at the possibility of flying saucers (“When fighter jets were scrambled, the fast-moving objects vanished from the sky, only to return when the fighter jets landed for refueling”) and shows his appreciation for the late Art Bell, who broadcast outlandish theories about secret hangars where felled extraterrestrial aircraft have been stored. Bell’s radio show always aired late at night, when the listener would receive it in suitably eerie settings, “driving a deserted highway, or fighting insomnia, or working a graveyard shift under fluorescent lights.” It’s entertaining bunkum, though probably best for like-minded readers who buy assertions such as “our natural world functions as a supernatural habitat for an intelligence that has accompanied mankind since the beginning of our time.” Still, such oddities are at least more original than his past-sell-date notes on such desert icons as Edward Abbey and Charlie Manson.

If you’re a fan of UFOs and insane heat, this is your book.