Bob Carr: Patron Saint of the Desert
In the middle of the Sky Village swap meet, where every item looks broken and covered in dust, there's an odd structure. Textured, colorful, and almost alien, but the dust covers it just so that if you turn your head too fast you'll miss it. It is called the Crystal Cave and we first stumbled upon it in 2017. When we walked in there was an old fella with a big smile that said,
"Hi! How are ya?"
"Fine" we said, "You?"
"Oh, I ain't got no sense, so I'm always happy. Here, come in my little room."
We ducked our head and walked in. It was a relatively small room. 5x7 feet at most. But he had build an entire world in there. Green everywhere, trees, gold, crystals, a water fall, fish in the pond, incense in the air. We found a truly alien oasis in the middle of a dirt lot. It was insane and caught us completely off guard. I'd never experienced anything like it. When we walked out we asked,
"Did you build this?"
"Well, building" he said, "Going in 14 years now. I have a little video. Shows ya all the nooks and crannies if ya got time to watch."
We of course took him up on the offer and walked into another odd room. All black at first, behind some curtains, then you see green and purple lights. Huge fake spiders and webs everywhere on displays he clearly built himself, and right in the middle- a row of chairs and a projector. We sat and marveled all over again. The video was an aerial shot of entire little world, inch for inch. We walked and had to ask,
"What inspired this?"
"I just followed my intuition" he said, "It just came to me and I started. I followed my intuition. You have to follow what your intuition says. There's no good or evil to it, it just is. That's your intuition. I've lived out here for over 30 years, I've seen so people come and go, and even sometimes come back! So many beautiful people and faces. One day I had an epiphany, that I had to pay them back for what they'd added to my life. I built this as a thank you to all of you. It's from you, through me, to you.”
That man was the purest being I'd ever met. His name was Bob Carr and he was truly wonderful.
In memory of Bob Carr, (1939 - 2019).
Bob in his Crystal Cave. Photo Credit: Samir S. Patel/Atlas Obscura