By Abdul Masih —
You find wisdom in the desert.
Under a blistering sun, you can climb a mountain and get a supernatural revelation at a place called Salvation Mountain in Imperial County, CA.
This is where Leonard Knight, deceased in 2014, left his life’s creation, his legacy, a funky, garish artistic oddity that looks like it was created by a hippie-turned-Jesus people.
“God is love,” Salvation Mountain proclaims on the entrance to Slab City, an abandoned Marines base turned squatters haven for societal dropouts with anti-establishment fervor.
Leonard was not a hippie. He learned mechanics in the Army during the Korean War. He was avoiding his sister who would tell him about the love of Jesus nonstop. He was running away from God. But one day, alone in his van, his sin crushed upon him and cried out to God. “Jesus, I’m a sinner, come in to my life.”
Tears rolled down his face. His hardened heart changed for a zeal for Jesus. He returned to his native Vermont to tell the churches the simplicity of God’s love and of accepting Jesus. They didn’t want to hear it. One day, a hot air balloon flew overhead and cause quite a commotion in the town. Leonard got the vision to paint “God is love” on the side of a hot air balloon to take the message across America.
The vision of fabricating a hot air balloon — buy and sewing together fabric — became the task of his life for the next 15 years. He supported himself with odd jobs and used his mechanic skills to build a pump to fill the balloon with hot air.
He brought his creation to Slab City, just outside Niland. But try as he might, the balloon wouldn’t work. He would fill it it with air and it would rip. He would re-sew it and try again. Innumerable times. Finally, the fabric and sewing “rotted out” in the desert.
He was a failure.
Leonard quit. He decided to raise a simple cement monument there in the desert and paint on it, “God is love.” He would stay just one more week to do it.
He kept erecting the monument for the next 30 years. It got bigger. Because cement was expensive and he didn’t have any money, he mixed it with too much sand, and the whole structure collapsed. Then he tried adobe, like the natives had done. It was abundant in the desert. Area farmers donated hundreds and hundreds of bales of hay for his project. People donated paint. He estimates that 200,000 gallons of paint colored the project.
The “mountain” grew to three stories high and half a football field wide. He crowned it with a cross and adorned it with a sinner’s prayer. There’s a Sea of Galilee in front of it and a hogan off to the side, which was supposed to be his home. But he never lived in it, choosing instead to sleep in his truck.
“I’ve never been happier in my life,” he said in 2013, a year before he passed. “I live as comfortable as can be. I live in that fire truck.”
Today his creation is recognized by the U.S. Senate as a national treasure in 2002. National Geographic featured it. When the Sean Penn-directed 2007 film Into the Wild featured it, tourists came in droves. A non-profit run by a ragtag band of folk artists preserve his work.
Salvation Mountain began as a foolish, quixotic idea to reach the world with a ludicrous lump of clay. But with childlike faith and determined doggedness, Leonard Knight continued working tirelessly under the punishing sun. The improbable materialized.
What is the wisdom? Many things. Believe in your dreams no matter who laughs at you. Don’t worry about finances. You can be happy living “uncomfortably” if you fall in love with your passion. Optimism is better than pessimism. He who serves humanity lives the most fulfilled.
Etc.
“I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her there,” God prophesies through Hosea, reimagining the passage of the Israelites through the desert. The Exodus was a hard time, but God reimagines it as idyllic, a time when he interacted with his people and loved and taught his people.
Wisdom in the desert.
Other gems in the Southern California desert: Liberty Sculpture Park a protest against totalitarianism, Barstow pastor once roamed the streets homeless, shirtless and out of his mind.
