Photo: Loic Bernard
Photo: Loic Bernard
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Death Valley: Extremes (cont.)
This is why we cruised through Death Valley with the
windows down. Far from refreshing the heat bristled
against our faces; the air wavered like that moment
in Star Trek before or after something gets beamed up
from the Enterprise. We were in the miniscule minority
on this one though; I actually took data. Most people
laze through Death Valley hermetically sealed within
their vehicles, stopping at one vista point and historical
site of interest after another, the air condition primped,
photo phonies, dutifully running off rolls of film at
designated spots. Many people never leave their cars.
They probe the area as if on another planet, taking
atmospheric readings, pondering and pointing at the
alien creatures outside somehow surviving.
We made contact with a few of the braver scouts. Between
the immense walls of shingled gravels and cemented slabs
of sienna stone that proclaim geological eras runs Titus
Canyon, a small sinewy one-way road that connects with
one of the park’s main thoroughfares. Muddling about
between patches of shade the shavings and debris from
those violent periods erect a prehistoric peace that
crunches beneath the feet. Periodic convoys hesitantly
passed. A few people breached their seals to ask, with
the tones of heroes, if we needed a lift as if we were
stranded in some remote nether-region on our last legs.
Yes, there is something to be said for the altruistic
thought, but even more to be said about the trend of
reluctance to get out and actually feel our surroundings.
No better were our heat-pocked thoughts and ideas, vague
like faintly smudged clouds evaporating in the heat,
synthesized than in Titus Canyon. A sleek SUV motored
down the road. Ricocheted off the walls, easy to confuse
with the sound of wind before its gust arrived, the
vehicle’s rumble got us off to the side of the narrow
way. It stopped in front of us. Two dapper young twentysomethings
incredulously gaped through the tinted windows, sealed
shut of course. Silence returned as the roiled dust
behaved like chalk clapped off erasers casting the scene
in a faint off-yellow haze. The driver’s window whirred
down with an inorganic precision. “Are you guys alright?
Can we help? Do you need a ride?” We assured him that
we were fine. Hell, the car wasn’t more than a mile
away. “Is that a TV?” my pal rhetorically said. “Get
any reception out here?” I asked. “Not on these goat
roads,” the driver ruefully replied, as if he had already
spent a better part of the day searching for even the
faintest signal.
Wafted by the air conditioner, I smelled the scent of
shampoo from a young woman’s finely coiffed hair. She
sat shotgun and caressed a professional looking camera
like a loaded gun, ready to take aim and immortalize
something in an instant as the car rolled past. “Boy,”
Nigel said cautiously as he leaned into the car and
suspiciously eyed the interior, “it sure is cold in
here.” The driver looked us up and down one more time,
nodded and then disappeared behind our reflections lunging
off the window in the fiercely bright sun. Shrouded
again in a veil of dust we watched the SUV go round
the bend, listening to its movement until it became
as indistinguishable as that of the wind.
Nigel had planned the trip (it was his car) to coincide
with a full moon. The plan had been to watch it arc
over the desert. After Titus Canyon and the previous
night’s dusty hot imitation of sleep, the two of us
nostalgically yearned for the Alabama Hills.
And this returns us to the beginning, of this piece
that is, right here near the end. We debated a run to
Vegas or a return to the red hills that had pleasured
us so. Cooled by the artificial stream the heat gave
us but one choice: stay. Rather than hideout the day
of the full moon, Nigel and I challenged the sun. We
confronted the heat right at noon time, walked smack
dab out into the middle of the salt flats, the iridescent
white light of death’s first moment, or life’s last,
blasting up into our eyes. A small white-piped weather
stand shared its shade with us. We watched a frenetic
sketch of a spider hopped-up on heat. It pranced about.
In retrospect, both Nigel and myself displayed symptoms
of heat stroke. The desert got the better of us. In
the oasis shade we decided to stay the night, continue
being the desert. Below the valley’s western mountain
line, the sun’s vanish conjured the winds, the hottest
most ungratifying wind I have ever felt. The sky bruised
and the stars were cued. A full moon does not rise until
about an hour after sunset. The wind hammered; we waited;
nothing else mattered.
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