Mahatma Gandhi believed we should not let the fact that we see our individual actions as insignificant deter us from still contributing to and participating in the change we wish to see. Apparently, he isn’t alone in that conviction. There are countless legacies created by the actions of individuals who could do nothing but what they were compelled to do. In the old days, this evocation would have been viewed as a “calling” presumably issued by a higher power, one that could not be ignored. Although one would think that those thus called upon by a deity would be duly honored, this has not always been the case.

I, personally, am in awe of the power of one, of the difference a single person can make, the effect their actions can have on the rest of us. I am fascinated by such people, whether driven by spiritual evocation, ethical morals, artistic muse or political/marketing savvy-- whether urban icons or desert recluses. Over the years, I have developed a keen reverence for them, for these Circle Walkers who tread outside the “box”, who carve out their own paths and are motivated solely by their heart’s contentment. Who face would-be deterrents as opportunities rather than obstacles, who acknowledge the power in choice. They remind me that maybe the basic truth is that there really is more than our nine-to-five concrete-scaped cul-de-sacs.

Gandhi, in his wisdom, also recognized that happiness occurs specifically when what we think, say, and do are in harmony. Circle Walkers seem to demonstrate his point. They, who are driven entirely by the process, the impulse to proceed, to act, to do. They who do what they do simply because to do so makes them happy, brings them joy and peace. Because they can think of doing nothing else; because for them, it’s who they are, their purpose for being

As different as I like to think I am from the rest of you, the reality seems to be that we all share some very primal instincts, a collective consciousness of, and thereafter a striving for, being happy. What brings us to that state may be different for each of us, but the desire is a commonality we seem to share.

For instance, I am most harmonious when I am freely in motion, unhindered (although “unhinged” would certainly sometime apply) mentally, spiritually and physically. I am happiest when my conscious intent is in alignment with my expressions and actions. For my grandmother, it was her Faith, i.e. Catholicism specifically, when she felt at One with God. For others, like Sister Teresa, it seems to have been selfless servitude of the impoverished; for Arthur Harold Beal, the “poor man’s Hearst”, it was to build a castle inexpensively; or for Simon Rodea who only set out to build “something big” in his spare time and who instead created Watts Towers a designated National Historic site, which has since been referred to as a “unique monument to the human spirit and the persistence of a singular vision.”

It is those with that very ‘persistence of singular vision’ to whom I am most drawn, to those who can do nothing but live by—or through—the force of their spirit. Not surprising that the root meaning of the word spirit (GK spire) means breath or life force. You can’t help but feel it when you meet these people or stand before their achievements; you can’t help but feel inspired, in spirit.

Leonard Knight would shrug his boney shoulders at me if I suggested that his work at Salvation Mountain, located at the gateway of Slab City in Niland, just over an hour due east of San Diego, was an inspiration. But it is and if you’ve ever bothered to make the drive out to the Salton Sea, you’d know that.

Originally from Vermont, born in a town that I know very well, Knight paints gardens in the desert. He’s built a 50’ tall, 150’ long mountain from strawbales and trash--discarded telephone poles, windows, and tires. Crossing his Sea of Galilee complete with submerged sail boat to climb the Yellow Brick Road to the cross fixed on the top of his Salvation Mountain leaves visitors speechless. Not just because they are wondering why anyone would bother to do this--in the middle of a scorched desert no less, but also because it really is an incredible artistic and structural achievement.

Built on the fault line, the mountain of paint and straw has withstood the strongest of earthquakes. There is some concern, however, whether his legacy will remain now that he’s gone. After having squatted on the vacant land beneath the Chocolate Mountains looking west over the volcanic cones protruding from the Salton Sea for more than a quarter of a century, Knight has been placed in long term care due to dementia. With the help of apprentices, he had been working to have his site designated a national heritage site, as Watts Towers in Los Angeles has been. With such designation pending, the fate of Salvation Mountain and his artistic tribute to love is on shaky ground.

Although religious, Knight was not a church goer. He felt ministers often missed the point, the simple point the Bible taught, which he told me was fore most simply To Love. “Keep it simple,” he told me over and over again throughout our talk, “just love.”

The sun was beginning to set and I didn’t want to leave his side. We sat in chairs under an awning he had erected aside the painted truck he’s been living in since 1985 when it broke down exactly where it’s been parked ever since. I watched his weathered knobby hands show me his home, his church with its numerous shrines carved from the mountain he built from the ground up. I watched his sagging skin sway as he lifted his arm to point out his birds he had painted on a window now used as a sky light that Sean Penn made famous in the movie Into the Wild. I lingered as he greeted yet another carload of sightseers come to marvel and snap photos. He hands out postcards by the stack and DVDs of a PBS documentary free of charge to the thousands of visitors each year. People hand him twenties left and right, which he pushes back at them. I left mine tucked between the next few DVD’s in his giveaway pile.

As with New York City ballerina Marta Becket who found herself with a flat tire in Death Valley, Knight was just passing through. Like her, at first glance, he hadn’t intended to stay in the desert. A week became a month became a year became half a lifetime. Someday soon, these elderly desert icons will return to the dust from which we all arose. And then, someday later, those like me who sought them out will also pass. There will come the time when no one is alive who once knew them and their stories will be buried in dusty archives. His mountain will fade in the blazing sunshine and will weather away, slowly decomposing, until nothing is left of his thirty years' work.

For this reason, I tell my children, and now their children, that there is a mountain in the middle of the desert not far from here that an ancient man built out of love. I tell them that he sleeps in an even older truck and that when you climb to the top of his mountain you can see far off to the mountains across the sea. I tell them how we had talked of the pine forests back in Vermont that we both missed and how he had trouble remembering from moment to moment but kept asking if I was the lady from Vermont. I tell them his story as he told me, which I know is only a single page in a pigeon paged chapter book. Others elsewhere, no doubt, are doing the same with their grandchildren, sharing another page in Knight’s life story, weaving another colorful thread in the tapestry of his shroud.

People like Knight are remembered long after their contributions to the physical world perish. Even when Salvation Mountain is blown back to level desert dust by decades of neglect, his peaceful generosity and suggestion that we “just love one another” will echo in the arid wind rolling like tumble weed across the mesa.