Beneath Las Vegas are miles of underground tunnels leading out of the city in all directions. “Underground tunnels” probably evokes images of hazardous, claustrophobic places, full of rusting pipes, electrical wires, and steam valves. But these tunnels are not part of the sewage or electrical system. They were meant solely to control floods. In the unlikely event of heavy rain, the city, being situated in a valley, would be flooded if not for these channels directing water away from the city into vast desert basins.

A few years ago Jason discovered an entrance to the channels by the desert next to his house. From a distance, it looked insignificant—cement walls topped by wire fences, like just another municipal structure. Walking up to it, I saw that the walls maintained a section dug out of the hill. On the wall facing into the center of Vegas was a square tunnel, as wide and tall as a single lane road. Jason handed me a flashlight and we headed in.

Except for the occasional manhole cover that led into the tunnels, they were bare of any structural features. These tunnels were simply long chambers of grey concrete. Occasional painted numbers, six digits long, marked the distance.

After a few minutes of walking, I glanced over my shoulder. A wall of pitch black met my eyes. Switching off the flashlight left us in total darkness. We were somewhere in the middle of this mile long tunnel.

The air was dry and cool. A slight draft constantly swept through. Combined with the utter darkness, the lack of sound became equally unsettling. Unused to total silence, my ears became jittery, expecting to hear something at each successive moment, but hearing nothing, like that feeling of unbearable suspense one gets immersed a well-crafted horror film. This hyper-expectant state made me hyper-sensitive. Occasionally, a car would run over a manhole cover, causing a sudden, jarring clunk to echo through the tunnel. My body jolted at each random sonic impulse of iron against iron, sustained and amplified down the concrete chamber.

After what felt like an hour of walking, we emerged from the other side into the sunlight. A wave of relieving sensory phenomena washed in. My eyes and ears once again bathed in the sights and sounds of the world. This section of the channel was exposed to the sky—clouds passed slowly overhead, airplanes droned, the highway roared softly in the distance. Caught in the wind, plastic bags whirled about with choreographic elegance. Empty, half crushed beer cans clanked along.

The floor was littered with trash: bottles, newspapers, plastic bags, ragged clothing, anything that the previous rain had carried with it. More and more frequently we saw signs of previous inhabitants. Dark smoke stains rising on the walls. Dirty mattresses. Bicycles hung up to avoid being washed away. I wondered if anyone lived in such an isolated place, and if we would encounter them. Probably not, I thought. This place felt like a ghost town.

The channel widened. The walls rose higher. I saw graffiti, most of it just a mess of neon lines layered on top each other. “HOLE” in large, ugly block letters, an arrow beside it pointing to a hole in the wall. Numerous hastily drawn penises drawn in two circles and a stretched out “U”. Beneath a red scrawl lay the image of a face painted in purple. Angular lines outlined its eyes, eyebrows, nose, and mouth in a way that implied the rest. The resulting gaze was so striking that we stopped to stare back it.

More and more frequently lateral tunnel openings appeared on either side. Other channels converged upon this one, Jason said. We were walking along one of the main channels that led to a wash. I looked down one these side tunnels, only ten feet wide and a few feet tall. Deep inside the tunnel obscured in the dark was a mattress, pots, a blue tarp, plastic water bottles, and other things I couldn’t identify. Part of me wondered if that lump on the mattress was a person.

Sometime later we encountered a man camped out in the channels. Hidden in the darkness, he spotted us first and whistled to get our attention. Instinctively I turned off the flashlight and stopped, my heart pounding, legs tensed up and ready to sprint back. Jason, a seasoned channel explorer, called out to the man, asking permission to pass. “Sure, go ahead,” the man said. I cautiously follow Jason forward as he approached him. Jason offered him food and water, but he declined. Besides being unshaven the middle aged man appeared in good condition. His clothes weren’t ragged. He had a mattress, pillow, and a cart full of food and water. I spotted a large knife lying on his bed within arms reach. Later, Jason explained that people down here need a way to defend themselves: “Being alone in this kind of place, you need to be prepared for anything.”

“We’re just passing through, I’m showing my friend around.”

The man nodded his head. “Keep reading the bible. The Revelation is coming.”

He went on to warn us about the apocalyptic dangers ahead. Instead of preaching to us the typical fire-and-brimstone voice of urgency, he spoke to us casually, nodding his head for emphasis. We asked him once again if he wanted food or water. He shook his head, insisting he was fine. As we walked on, I wondered if he really was fine. I wondered if he denied our help out of dignity, under some illusion that he was okay. I resisted the urge to glance back. Planes droned and the highway hummed in the background. All of it seemed far away in the distance.

Photo by Jason Kim.

My earliest memory is a series of discrete images. A slideshow rather than a scene. The gaps in the pictures obscure what was happening in the memory, leaving me with a collection of words devoid of verbs. There are, however, plenty of nouns and adjectives.

The memory begins with a small, aluminum, semispherical bowl. It was the bowl my grandmother used to feed me with, though if I were being good she would let me attempt it myself — a chopstick in each hand, determined to manipulate the food into my mouth but usually failing. There was something green in the bowl, probably some sort of Chinese vegetable given how much I love vegetables now.

I was in the cramped dining room of my grandparents’ old apartment in Sanming, a dusty industrial place. The bottom of the walls were painted an ugly shade of turquoise, the top half a discolored white. Across one side of the room were big windows that faced the apartment complex’s courtyard. Small potted plants sat on the windowsill. I forget what they looked like.

A soft, yellow light diffused about the room, softening edges and blurring lines, as if turning down the sharpness on a TV. I can’t be sure whether this was how it actually looked, or if my memory has literally faded over time like an old photograph. As I envision the room now, it seems more and more to resemble a sepia print. The memory, the mental image, seems to age as I invoke it. Or perhaps the memory grows clearer, revealing the agedness of the room itself.

I used to write in my journal all the time in high school, especially between when school ended and when my parents came home. The quietness and boredom of the house brought my inner thoughts into focus. Journaling, then, was my way of managing these thoughts, a way to force the mental torrent into a stream of discrete and lucid ideas.

To maintain a habit of journaling, it seems necessary to have a river of thoughts compelling one to pick up the pen. But the roaring torrent diminishes to a stream when the days get busier. The mind has other tasks to focus on. Responsibilities take precedence over introspection.

As I explored the mountains, valleys, and canyons of Zion, I felt a different tension keeping me from journaling: the desire for a pure and undistracted experience. Journaling, photography, and any other kind of personal recordkeeping place me in the reflective mode. Recordkeeping involves picking and choosing what to jot down, what to take a picture of, requiring that I sift through my immediate memories for the significant ones.

To reflect in this way is to view the present from an elevated perspective, which not only brings me out of the moment’s immediacy, but also transposes my attention from the external world to the internal mind. It seems a shame to dilute the raw and sensory impressions by notebook or camera. There will be time for that later when the day is done.

But at the same time, I want to capture the very experience I’m afraid of diluting, so that I can remember or perhaps even relive it. This internal conflict afflicts writers and those with literary or artistic sensibilities. Does an ideal balance exist between experience and reflection, between the possibilities of living in the moment and reliving the past?

Beneath Las Vegas are miles of tunnels leading out of the city in all directions. Made of cement and wide enough for cars, they are known as the flood channels. In the unlikely event of heavy rain, the city, being in a valley, would be flooded. The flood channels do exactly what their name suggests: they channel water from the city to the surrounding desert.

A few years ago Jason discovered an entrance to the channels by the desert next to his house. From a distance, it looked insignificant—cement walls surrounded by wire fences. It looked like just another municipal structure, for the sewage system maybe. Walking up to it, I saw that the walls outlined a section dug out of the hill. On the wall facing into the hill (and into Vegas proper) was a square tunnel, as wide and tall as a single lane road. Jason handed me a flashlight and we headed in.

After a few minutes of walking, I glanced over my shoulder. A wall of pitch blackness met my eyes. Switching off the flashlight left us in total darkness. We were somewhere near the middle of this mile long tunnel.

The floor was littered with trash: bottles, newspapers, plastic bags, ragged clothing, anything that the rain had carried with it. Occasionally we saw signs of previous inhabitants. Dark smoke stains rising to a point on the walls. Dirty mattresses. Bicycles hung up to avoid being washed away. Part of me wondered if that lump in the mattress was a person. I wondered if we would encounter anyone in such a dark and isolated place.

I could hear nothing but the sound of our own footsteps and breathing. Occasionally, a car would run over a manhole cover, causing a sudden, jarring clunk to echo throughout the tunnel. I quickened my pace, waiting to see the distant glint of the other end.

Photo by Jason Kim.

Las Vegas is Spanish for “the meadows.” It used to be a green valley in the middle of endless desert. Now it has become what is considered the “Entertainment Capital of the World,” notorious as a bastion of hedonism, a place adults go to have shameless fun. When others hear that Jason and I are going to Vegas for spring break, they tell us we’ll have an awesome time, half smiling half smirking.

Jason lives in the Vegas suburbs. He wanted to show me the side of Vegas that wasn’t just blinding lights and glittering casinos and flashy dancers. He and his three siblings grew up with the desert hills in their backyard. When he was younger they would go to the desert to shoot airsoft guns. In high school, the desert gave him a quiet place to hike and be surrounded by nature.

He took me to the top of the “ridge,” a tall and steep hill that seemed to be crumbling away. Besides some small cacti, the landscape was comprised of nothing but sand and rock. It was windy. I could see for miles around me. In the distance, perhaps hundreds of miles away, were the shapes of mountains, more and more faded as they receded.

From here, the city looked like arrangement of tiny blocks of different heights. It was small compared to the vastness of the entire valley—the last thing someone would think standing on the strip. As the sun set, lights began turning on until the entire city became a sea of orange. Together, the lights appeared to shimmer. The sky was cloudless. A full moon lit our way down the hill and back to the road.

Photo by Jason Kim.