"Night Rider's Lament" by Michael Burton

I've been thinking about all the boom and bust cycles I have seen in my lifetime now that we are on pause in NYC due to COVID-19. Folks have been staying home and NYC is looking more and more like a ghost town. Hopefully, it is only temporary.

I am remembering all the real ghost towns I saw during my travels out West. This shot posted below is one I took at Bodie, a ghost town and now a state historic public park in an extremely remote part of the Eastern Sierras of California. It is at an elevation of 8379 feet. One tiny long dirt road is all that leads into the town. Windswept and lonely, there is literally nothing nearby.

This town was founded in 1876 with the discovery of gold. During its heyday in 1879, it had a population of nearly 7,000 people.  A visitor in 1881 wrote that Bodie was “a sea of sin, lashed by the tempests of lust and passion”.

A tale is told that a young girl wrote in her diary, upon learning she and her family were moving to Bodie, “Goodbye God, I’m going to Bodie”.

I took the shot below of the Swazey Hotel in Bodie. This building served as a clothing store, a casino, and finally as the Swazey Hotel during Bodie's active years. By 1915, Bodie was all but abandoned.

Today, Bodie is preserved in a state of "arrested decay". Only a small part of the town survived, with about 110 structures still standing. When I visited, we walked the streets of the empty town and were able to look into shop windows and see goods left there when the town was abandoned. We also visited the town cemetery on a high hill where 150 grave markers still stand.

When the Boom Goes Bust

These memories of trips I took while living out west remind me of this song I recorded many years ago. Many things may have passed me by, but then as the song goes:

"...Ah but they've never seen the Northern Lights
They've never seen a hawk on the wing..."

I wouldn't trade my travels for anything....

I hope we can travel again soon! The song below features Clive Gregson on mandolin. Thanks Clive for the great back up! Recorded at the California Coast Music Camp

Night Riders Lament