Magic Sierra Nevada

I left the embrace of San Diego while it was still dark, as the sea yawns with salty steam and the harbour cranes draw the first lines of the day on the horizon. The shimmer of water outside the window slowly fades away, and the heat of the Californian desert creeps under the wheels. In the mirror, the ocean bids farewell; ahead, a hot draught is born, smelling of sage and sand.

The road climbs to the Cuyamaca Mountains, the chill of the needles disappearing with each hairpin turn, until the view opens up to a crack in the earth called Anza-Borrego Desert. Where once the sea of Cortez roared, today ocotillo cacti bloom in the shape of fiery fingers. In the crumbs of light, Salton Sea flickers in the valley – a blue mirror without a reflection, a forgotten pond within the earth's vessel.

The north leads along Highway 395, the artery of California's interior. In the Mojave, the asphalt melts into mirrors, in which the mirage of persistent trains dances. Randsburg flickers like a film set: a couple of rusty pumps, a bar with glaring white signs, where the ghosts of cattlemen whisper. Beyond Independence, the desert bends – and to the west rises a grey castle of granite: Sierra Nevada.

Lone Pine breathes eucalyptus and old westerns. In the humbled shadow of Mount Whitney, the dry grass of Alabama Hills rustles; among the boulders, traces of film stunt teams remain. When the sun sets, I look out to see how the pink snow of salt crusts is born on the white plain of Owens Lake, and the black lines of the railway tracks disappear under layers of time.

Further north stands Bishop with its poplars. The steam of hot springs at Hot Creek rises into the night sky, where the Milky Way shines like dusty silk above the black spine of the Sierra. Just a single step off the road, and I can hear my own heart bumping against the void.

On my way back, I gaze at the eastern slopes of the Sierra: in the pale light of the morning, the white lines of old mining roads shine, winding upwards like a graph of a feverish life that ended before the dream was completed. On the ridge of Ancient Bristlecone Forest stand the oldest trees on the planet — five-thousand-year-old witnesses that time is not just a line, but a circle, in which each journey is reborn.

When I look back from the new height, I see all the colours of the road trip at once: the blue of the Pacific, the brown of the desert, the grey-silver edge of the mountains, the purple blanket of night, the golden ribbon of dawn. The engine still purrs, but the dust has already settled: it answered all the questions I didn't even get to ask.