wendover report no. 2

It is always interesting when you are traveling and you arrive at a destination in the dark of night.
When you arrive to an unfamiliar location during daylight hours, the visual characteristics of the space slowly reveal themselves to you as you approach. You are already visually acclimated to the landscape, and as you see your destination in the distance you can slowly piece things together as you approach; what the land looks like, what the sky looks like, what the buildings look like, etc, one thing at a time. The details slowly reveal themselves as they come into view, allowing you to get your bearings and piece things together step by step.
But when you arrive at a new location in the dark of night the experience is very different. You are not sure what the landscape looks like or what is on the horizon. Are there mountains out there, or rolling flatlands or forest? The world takes on the false yellowish-color of projected light, and everything outside the wash of street lamps or headlights is tucked away in a blanket of darkness. The world becomes more immediate and reduced to pools of artificial light, and everything beyond the reach this light disappears until tomorrow.
I arrived in Wendover around midnight, first passing through the rather well lit Nevada side of town where the casinos are and then into the very barren and dark Utah side where the old air base is located. Guided in by cell phone and a vague memory of an online map of the base that I looked at days earlier, I eventually found The Residence Support Unit tucked away among rows and rows of abandoned barracks. “The Unit,” a 12″x60″ mobile structure that was originally owned and used by a construction company, but has since been acquired by The Center for Land Use Interpretation and renovated by the fine folks of SIMPARCHand now serves as a sort of “residence hall” for the visiting artists. Exhausted from the eleven hours of driving and feeling a bit disorientated in the darkness of the Utah desert, I was eager to get the mini van parked and get to bed. Upon finding my set of keys and getting situated, I took Tess for a short walk then quickly fell asleep. It was exciting to go to bed not knowing what I would see the next morning outside my bedroom window.

(my first morning i woke up before sunrise and walked outside to find this view directly behind the Unit. I then climbed to the top of the tower and watched the sunrise. the structure in the photo below is ‘the unit’, the airstream is ‘the extra bedroom’)

If I know a little bit about something, but haven’t seen it, I like to imagine what I think it looks like, and then, upon seeing it, compare my imagined version with the reality that is revealed. It is kind of like a game; usually I am very far off and my pre-conceived images look nothing like what they turn out to be. But occasionally I surprise myself and come very close with my visual predictions.
That said, I was a little overwhelmed when I woke up Monday morning and able to see the world surrounding me. I had an idea of what this place was going to look like, but had no idea to what extent. The sun was hot and bright and revealed horizons so far away that you’d swear you could see the curvature of the Earth. Immediately behind The Unit is an old runway, a control tower, and a giant, rusting hanger that used to be home to the Enola Gay. In the 1940s the Wendover Airfield was one of the biggest and most important airforce bases during WWII. It was a top-secret facility hidden out in the desert and is where bomber squads, including the ones that dropped atomic weapons on Japan, did their training. But after shutting down in the late sixties, the sprawling base now sits in a state of decay. The buildings are weathered and falling down, but because of their historical significance, and obvious economic challenges, it seems like nobody has the heart or resources to actually bulldoze them. The base has been empty for over 30 years, ownership has changed hands several times, and the local economy is so bad that this derelict compound is able to just sit here in a sort of suspended animation as the world around it waits to decide what to do with it.
So far I am pretty amazed and overwhelmed by it all. So many directions to point the camera it is kind of driving me crazy.

(view from the tower overlooking the runway and off towards the salt flats)