#trinity site

Man working at Trinity nuclear test site, White Sands, New Mexico

Date: 1945

Sometimes, I am terminally confused by the sheer ridiculousness that is New Mexico, as a concept. Chaco Canyon aside, there is so much dumb shit to get up to in New Mexico. Maybe it’s just that my GPS had an aneurysm after I accidentally dropped it in a puddle right outside Raton, but it refused to send me the normal way to any destination I chose.

For example: White Sands Missile Range. At first you’d think, Mits, why are you at a missile range? And I would agree with you on that line of questioning, there are very few reasonable explanations as to why I was on an active missile range. My reason happens to be one of them, however: the 75th anniversary of the Trinity Test - the culmination of the Manhattan Project and the first nuclear explosion in the history of mankind.

Some fun facts about the Trinity Site: It is only open for a few hours two days a year, it remains radioactive to this day, and google maps has absolutely zero navigation data for its entirety. Yes, there is a pattern to my shenanigans. So anyway, I wanted to go and get irradiated - I was sitting in line for the gates to this - again, ACTIVE - missile range to open for the day. As I got closer, I noticed a sign that read ‘ENTERING ACTIVE TEST RANGE. AREAS POTENTIALLY CONTAMINATED WITH EXPLOSIVE DEVICES. STAY ON THE ROADS. DO NOT DISTURB ANY ITEMS. IF ITEMS ARE FOUND CALL POLICE XXX-XXX’. Cool and also normal, I’m just going to head into this area with zero knowledge of where I’m going. I got my ID checked, told the man with the very large gun as sweetly as possible that I was here to see the Trinity Site, and was told that I needed to go straight until I saw someone wave me to the left.

Cool, cool, that’s an easy order to comply with.

If you have an attention span longer than a goldfish.

So anyway, I think I was about thirty minutes down this road before I realized that I was actually supposed to be looking for someone waving me to the left. I started scanning the rather flat landscape, but quickly lost track of what I was doing for another fifteen minutes before I remembered, once again, I was supposed to be looking for someone waving me to the left.

It was at this point that I became worried I had missed the person and was just driving down a road I was not legally allowed to be on, but I felt a certain amount of assurance that since I hadn’t blown up, and no one was shooting at me, I was probably in the right place.

Thankfully! After another five or ten minutes I finally saw a car with flashing lights and a guy standing just outside waving at me to turn left. So I turned left, and not too long after found myself at the Trinity Site. It was truly amazing, some of the original artifacts like ‘Jumbo’ or a post WWII casing that resembled the Fatman. The obelisk in the center of the detonation field was exactly 100 feet below where the original Gadget had been deployed, the tower it had been atop completely obliterated save some spikes of metal sticking out from the ground. All around, you can hear geiger counters going off as a few national park personnel explain how trinitite, the expensive, radioactive glass found only here, was created. And of course, a lot of people with very large guns.

After I walked the entire crater, read all the placards, got my picture taken by this older gentleman (Who I in turn took a picture for), I walked back to the parking lot. I got that itch again, that feeling like I should probably know more about where I was when I clearly did not.

So I went over to one of the big men with big guns and said in my sweetest ‘I am a very dumb but fragile tourist’ voice, “How do I get out of here?”

He said he didn’t know, and that I should go and ask a slightly smaller man with a big gun a few feet away. So I walked over, and repeated the same question. I got a very curt “Go out that way,” and a finger point to a direction I had not come through. “To go back to the main gate?” I asked, because I knew there were two roads into the Trinity Site. “Everyone goes that way.”

Hmm. Okay, sure, not going to argue with someone holding a gun that weighed a third of my body weight. I thanked him, got back in my car, and went to head out the direction he had pointed. I stopped next to the gate of the parking lot, where a guy with - you guessed it! - a big gun told me to continue straight until someone flagged me down.

The New Mexican Expanse 

I took these shots on a road trip with a few of my best friends. The sun on Trinity and White Sands. October 2019.