A Brief Interruption

I’m sure that by now most of you have heard of Salvation Mountain and perhaps seen it in Into the Wild or other places (like the “world wide internet” as Leonard would say).  The first time I heard about it was in one of my drawing classes at Biola, about 5 years ago.  Since then, it has been somewhere I have been dying to visit!

So Ryan and I made the trek out to the Salton Sea to visit the mountain and camp with some lovely friends.  Thank you, Land Rover, for being so ruggedly wonderful.

Our first stop was Salvation Mountain.  It was visible from the road as we were driving up and all the vibrant, cartoony colors got me so excited to explore this artistic mecca.  We were greeted by Leonard Knight, the artist behind Salvation Mountain.

He gave us a tour of his masterpiece and told us about all the coverage he gets on the “world wide internet” and the “world wide movies.”  He was almost too much to handle, he was so amazing!

He built his mountain from the adobe rich clay soil in the area.  Other parts he builds up with donated hay bails and covers them in the clay.  This is the start of a structure…

Recently, Leonard goes out into the desert and collects fallen tree branches to build these crazy web structures inside parts of the mountain …

The yellow brick road leads you to the top of the mountain.

We, of course, hiked up to see the view of the Salton Sea, Slab City and the surrounding area.

Leonard wakes up every morning at 5am to work on repairing, building, and repainting his mountain.  It is the obvious work of a dedicated artist.

All his supplies are donated…there are paint cans scattered about everywhere.

An artist’s tools:

He has a good sized collection of vehicles (cars, trucks, boats) that he also paints.

I was soooo excited to be there!

After visiting Salvation Mountain and getting Mexican food, we headed back to our camp ground.

We enjoyed the company of dear and new friends as we made hobo stew and sat around the campfire.

Thank you to Eric and Heather for planning the field trip to the Salton Sea!

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Look for a post all about Leonard Knight coming up soon.