Petrified Forest Residency: The Lightning Field by Walter de Maria

The Lightning Field experience is as far removed from Drive-by Tourism as it’s possible to get. Well, that’s not true — a two-month Park residency is perhaps a bit further along that continuum.

But to go to the Lightning Field takes some effort, and money. Reservations are made far in advance, as the cabin in which you are housed can hold only 6 people. The cost is reasonable, but not cheap; it includes a night’s lodging, dinner, and breakfast, as well as the hour’s travel from the village of Quemado, New Mexico, out to the Field in a “company” van. You aren’t blindfolded, but the trip to the Field wouldn’t be easy for me to recapitulate, although I do know that it’s 11 miles from the Continental Divide.

Once at the Lightning Field, we (Jer, myself, and 3 others) were introduced to the comfortable log cabin facilities (all mod cons like heat and stove and mouse proof containers included) and left to fend for ourselves. We spent a total of about 19 hours at a (actually gorgeous authentic) log cabin, placed at the center north end of 400 stainless steel poles, topped with precisely tooled and welded tips. The poles are organized in a grid,   one mile by one kilometer, and their tops are aligned within (I believe) 1/25  of one another, so a (theoretical) plate of glass could be placed on top of the 400 poles with each tip touching it.

I decided to set off diagonally across the field, dodging large ant hills, moving around sage and desert sticky plants, moving from pole to pole, which I could see lined up from my starting point. However, once I got between two poles, I found it difficult to figure out which diagonal alignment I was working toward. It was disorienting to be in such a precisely oriented space (and I could always see the cabin, so I was never lost) and yet not to know exactly which pole to chase to maintain my goal.

There was not a cloud in the sky (and none appeared while we were there) and when we arrived, the poles were barely visible. As the sun started to decline, the poles started to appear, in a rhythm I can’t quite describe (I’d have to watch it over and over to get it in my head), until first they were all visible and all silver and then, ever so gradually, they turned faintly and then more radically golden and then rosy gold.

The alignment of the poles from the porch of the cabin (which deserves a whole paragraph in itself) was such that the golden aisle of poles beckoned one, like the emperor’s road. At the same time, the poles seemed to be advancing in a slightly golden menacing military motion.

And then, zip — it was gone. Darkness descended. We ate the prepared enchilada dinner, with flan dessert, and a ginger chocolate offered by one of the other guests. We went out to an absolutely dark sky, no light pollution, and I saw the milky way, the first time I’d seen it since we were at French Glen, near Steen’s Mountain, in southeast Oregon, in the early 1990’s.

Jer and I got up before the sun rose and stood in the field to watch what happened when the sun came over the horizon. It was a lovely gentle sunrise, long across the furthest space and slow in lighting the sky. The amazing moment came when we realized that the sun was starting to touch the far western mountains, and then ran along the base of them on the plain, a tiny bit higher than we were, and then, the Un-Shadow, the sunlight, came toward us, perhaps down an imperceptible declivity, over a matter of maybe a minute, before it reached us, just at the bottom of the bowl, and the lit up all the poles. The poles came into view gradually, all silvered, but we were almost more fascinated to see the light moving in a miles-long line, closer and closer, as far north and south as our peripheral vision could see.

We are told that the poles turned golden later in the sunrise process, but shortly after the sun had actually crested the eastern hills, we shivered our way back to bed and didn’t get up until about nine. I made another march straight south from one pole to the next, tooting the pentatonic flute at each pole, and then turned around at number 6 or 7 or 8 (out of 16) to be ready for the van when it returned at 11.

We took no photographs, per instruction. We were there, present, most of the time, although I’ll admit to having read myself to sleep with a bit of Tony Hillerman. We had charming conversations with the other guests at dinner, but mostly wandered off by ourselves except for that early morning moment, when Jer and I leaned back to front, keeping warm enough to stick around for the sunrise.

Walter de Maria wrote an article for Art Forum in 1980, in which he cites the facts about the Lightning Field — number of poles,  the number of months it took to make it, the precise distances between poles — a whole host of facts. And he interspersed the facts with, well, I could call them “dictations” or “truths” or “observations.” I will simply drop them off here and you can decide what they are. Remember, each statement is followed by perhaps 25 facts about the poles and their making.

1. Facts are not the art.

2. Isolation is essential to the art.

3. The sum of the facts does not constitute the work or determine its aesthetics.

4. Part of the essential content is the ratio of people to space — small number of people, large space.

5. The land is not the setting for the work but is a part of the work.

6. Light is as important as lightning.

7. The invisible is the real.

8. Isolation is the essence of land art.

I numbered these;  de Maria did not. They may not be in the order that he wrote them. I think I have copied down all the statements and copied them fairly correctly, but it’s also possible I missed one or more and/or mis-wrote one or more. For any errors, I apologize. The man who set out the poles would not have missed one nor mis-wrote one. The geometries and precisions are awesome. But not as awesome as the experience itself. –June

Here’s another blog with other information on the experience.

And here’s Blake Gopnik’s review in the Washington Post