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Photos courtesy Leland Howard, "Sliding Rocks", and Joshua Tree in Death Valley As he John-Wayned over to talk to my brother, I saw that the Ranger had a nine millimeter pistol in his holster, with an extra ammo clip in his belt. Must be dangerous work keeping the tourists in line these days. "We figgered you folks probably don't know where you're going," the Ranger said. He and his buddy had come careening around the corner in their white pickup and slid to a stop on the gravel road, motioning us to stop. I wanted to tell him "Don't assume we're stupid until we prove it." He had probably had plenty of tourists prove their ignorance to him in the past. We told him our planned destination. "There's no camping on this road, not for the next 33 miles." "Yes, we know. We're going past the sliding rocks area to camp." "Well, I guess you could camp at the Homestake Mine, but the road is rough, doesn't get any better than it is here, maybe worse." He smiled. "It's gonna get very cold up there tonight, and it's almost dark now." Oooohhh. We were almost scared. Dark and cold. My brother, Leland, and I have winter camped in Idaho and Utah and have found our way down pathless mountains in the dark. We figured our chances of survival were good. The Ranger let us pass, obviously against his better judgement. The road was the worst washboard I'd ever seen. It is reasonably straight and climbs gently towards the mountains. A two wheel drive car can negotiate it. But for 33 miles the gravel road is sheer torture for travelers.... You could tell that it was bloody hot there most of the time, but in late November, at about 4000 feet elevation, we felt the full sting of bitter winter winds. One miner's bunkhouse with the roof gone, framed the sunset with glassless windows and empty door frames set in native stone. As Leland photographed the bunkhouse we listened to the creaks, moans and whistles that the main mining shaft apparatus gave off in the rising wind. The aging wood, tin and iron was not long for this world and already sounded like it had one foot in the first circle of hell.
We entered the Park's northern door in the morning and came upon a many-roomed castle with its own hydro-electric plant, horse stables, fountains, palm trees, and courtyards. It was bordered by burning desert and alkaline, whitish soil that supported a few creosote bushes. The "castle" is a tourist attraction, run by the park service, with expensive gift shops and no latté. It is an edifice that fails to edify. Unless you count it as a lesson in what some people can get away with. In the late 1800s "Death Valley Scotty" conned all his estate-building funds out of a gullible Easterner who thought he would someday get a trainload of silver back for his investment. Scotty mined the investor instead of the hills of Death Valley. A truly Hollywoodish production. We had crossed the border into California... In the morning, we found some silence out on the sand dunes. The long curves and delicate shadows flowed away from us as the sun rose. The exposed mud flats between the dunes are about 10,000 years old, the remnants of an Ice Age lake. I walked on the creamy, cracked mud flats. They felt smooth against my bare feet, permeated with ancient ambiance. A tour bus stopped and distant, brightly clad people filed out of it and sped up the highest dunes like ants in a line. We set out to explore Furnace Creek, The Devil's Golf Course, Devil's Cornfield, and Dante's View, among others. Most of the points of interest in Death Valley bear names with hot and hellish connotations. Frankly, it can be wearing. Funeral Mountains, Devil's This, Devil's That. Even the "salt" in many of the names began to irritate me after a few days. Some things took on an ugly tinge... The salt flats can also be a place of Big Silence. Few tourists linger there and the flats are so expansive that you can walk out into them and be alone. Two hundred square miles of salt flats, eroded by the rain into miniature, evil-looking castles. Two colors, brown and white. You could die out there. In fact, the sign on Dante's Viewpoint says that anything left on the salt flats will soon be "thoroughly dead". I'm not sure what the difference is between dead and thoroughly dead, but I think it was well put. Experimentally, I poured a little water from my bottle onto the bristling peak of a salt rampart and, as it dissolved, it hissed faintly, popped and sighed. During the rare cloudbursts you can hear the rain carving sighs out of the acres of salt... The Racetrack is a dry lake bed, a playa, about 3 miles long and almost as wide, a long oval shape completely surrounded by mountains. None of the mountains have much growing on them, so they are a frame of pure shape, color and form. The lake bed itself is uniformly cracked, like fancy tile work, and very flat in all directions. It is crisscrossed by the bizarre tracks of large rocks from nearby dolomitic limestone cliffs. Once the rocks make it onto the dry lake bed, they start a decades-long amusement park ride over the surface. Whenever conditions are right (70 mile per hour winds, rain or ice) the rocks slide over the ancient mud, compressing but not erasing the tiles, and leaving a slightly smeared track in their wake... We killed time until sunset by climbing a hill to look over into Saline (pronounced suh-LEEN) Valley. Saline Valley is another recent addition to the park. Unfortunately, 78 miles of washboard road must be traversed to explore it, and some of the route is also "4 x 4 recommended". After negotiating the 33 miles into the sliding rocks area, we didn't think we or the truck could take 78 miles more of the same. Too bad. I hate to leave any place unexplored, especially one that contains species unique to the area and/or otherwise extinct.
Saline Valley has naked hippies (so named in the Park literature). Sometime in the Flower Power Epoch, hippies from the coastal cities migrated to the hot springs, and set up self-ruled communities in the shade of the palm trees at each oasis. So far, the Park Service has accepted their descendents, and like the pupfish of Salt Creek, they have become an anachronistic phenomenon, a tourist attraction that features the past preserved for present ogling. Park service brochures warn the squeamish that they may encounter nudity, but few chance the long, completely serviceless roads that lead in and out of the valley. Hardy souls used the hot springs for recreation as early as 1928, but most of the present day population can be traced to the endangered species "Hippie Californius." As a perfect accompaniment to the hippies, Saline Valley also boasts "Crystal Ridge" where well-formed quartz crystals as large as 8" x 3" have been found, many with a rare seventh crystal face along the side of the prism. (Reference: "The Explorer's Guide to Death Valley National Park" by T. Scott Bryan and Betty Tucker-Bryan.)... [Excerpt from a longer story by Lynna Howard, copyright Lynna Howard, 2000, 2005. Do not reprint or distribute without permission. All rights reserved. Thank you.] Return to Lynna Howard's Homepage | View Sample Photos by Leland Howard Legalese: Unless otherwise noted, the text and images that appear on this web site are copyrighted material. Please do not copy or redistribute these materials in any way without prior permission. Thank you, Lynna Howard, 2002, and revised 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008. |
