On our way back fromCES , Gizmodo contain a detour into the desert to explore a peculiarly bizarre aspect of the region ’s electrical substructure , the so - calledCoyote Dry Lake Return Electrode .
The electrode seems to exist more in the realm of the not - totally - sustain . According to theCenter for Land Use Interpretation(CLUI ) , the electrode “ is part of a high - emf DC melody connecting theIntermountain Power Plant(a large coal - fired flora in the middle of Utah that was ramp up to dish up Los Angeles ) to a substation near Victorville . ” Which is all directly - fore enough , of course — until you read what is purportedly happening there .
“ The ground itself has been used as a return electrode for the current , ” CLUI explicate , “ fundamentally energizing the desert over the five hundred miles between here and the works . The current enter the ground through a buried connection of wire , laid out in a half - mile full rophy , with a little building in the midsection , on the edge of Coyote Dry Lake . ”
The earth itself is play as an electrical return electric battery for the California state electrical grid , energizing the landscape painting from below and lay in power in the planet . The electrode itself is apparently “ a gridiron of wires underground , but a minor utility program building is visible on the surface . ”
CLUI warns , however , that “ the route is very sandy and may be impassable , ” and this turn out true for us after a sure full stop on the unpaved road , sadly enough ; after all , at this point you are drive on the outer edge of the Coyote Dry Lake , and the “ route ” is more like a beach than a linear patch of transportation infrastructure . In fact , we actually had to drive around a yellow traffic sign saying “ END , ” pass underneath electrical wires , and tentatively head further north along a road rapidly twist into deep movement of sand . There are a few more statute mile of this , CLUI suggests , before you hit the electrode .
In our case , driving an economy - class rental car unprepared for much more than your average city street , we had to stop .
Somewhere up in front , the earth was crackle with buried electricity , a nervous system without nerves flow through the footing around us . These peripheral web and thedesigned infrastructural landscapesthey sit within form an interesting contextual halo around our existingCES coverage , as it is these arrangement from which our gadgets and cities draw power .
https://gizmodo.com/hoover-dam-is-a-super-gadget-that-keeps-the-lights-in-v-1496815769
But the bury grid somewhere in the landscape up in advance was n’t even the strangest part of our detour . On our way to the electrode , we passed theSaint Antony Coptic Orthodox Monastery . The monastery is right smart out there , and it first appears on the horizon look not unlike a nuclear king plant — which really seems meet , given the intensive nature of the country ’s electrical system here , as gantries and power lines all seem to converge at this point in the desert . From a distance , though , the monastery ’s orthodox noodle mountain pass , instead , for an senesce index industrial plant , some midcentury synagogue for the splitting of the atom , a secular church of radiation and might shiver ahead like a mirage in the oceanic landscape painting of sandy territory and immense sky .
finally , though , signs look and , as you approach the site , its spiritual tie is obvious .
At this point in the driving , you are passing what appear to be failed agricultural experimentation , such as a dead olive grove concentrate to gnarled old silver soapbox exsiccate by desert hotness and aridity . The monastery itself has irrigation equipment spreading outward from the cardinal facility and its tireless — albeit unrealistically affirmative — effort to turn this rich desert site into a thriving farm of some sort becomes obvious .
But what is so prominent — and so awful — about this is the very whim that an electrified piece of the terra firma ’s control surface seems to host or , at least , to coincide with an institution for religious self - reflection .
It ’s as if monk are out there in the void to swear out as unforced human participants in that state ’s power grid , meditating on the terrestrial electricity soar upwards through the sand and gravel around them .
sure as shooting a million comic books could be written about such a matter ! Some splinter group of linesman - Thelonious Monk hold up sparsely in the California desert , drawing power from the commonwealth ’s buried electrical gridiron and even feeding back into it through nightly rituals . A desert cult of the electrical meditator . A remote monastery - battery live by living electrode .
In any event , we advert out for a while on the dusty road outside the monastery as a few cars came zip up out without saying hello to us ; we watched them roar off south again to the freeway , a roughly 20 - mo drive southward .
Then , our foot imaginatively prickle with buried electricity , we got back in our own rattle rental car and continued on our elbow room to Los Angeles .
Lead image courtesy of theCenter for Land Use Interpretation
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