I am sitting at my computer with tears running down my face. I guess it is technically called crying. Not exactly crying in Joy, but very far from crying in anguish. I started crying when I saw the picture above. But first I saw this picture.
The pictures came – directly, not originally – from Elad Nehorai‘s “20 Photos That Change The Holocaust Narrative” and the title is pretty much self explanatory. They are pictures of hope and power and defiance. These pictures of normal people – Jews who then weren’t always thought of as normal people and, I guess, in some places are still not thought of as normal people – reacting in normal ways to the most un-normal of circumstances, has moved me to my core. Some are pictures of Jews realizing they have been liberated,
some are people willing to be themselves, willing to defiantly be themselves.
All are pictures of hope and, even, joy. I urge you to click through and see the pictures and read the captions.
My favorite time of day is late afternoon (oh! and maybe early morning when the world is coming alive). Especially when hiking. It is that time on an all day hike when the hike part of the hike is over, and we are wandering home (or back to camp). Usually in the afternoon shade, the air still warm, and almost always going down hill. In the Sierras, it would often be across a soft meadow, in the desert, it might be down a fan or a ridge. Here it is back to Ubehebe Crater, on the far side from the crowds, with a backdrop that is immense.
As the day was winding down, it was still very windy with rain squalls moving through the hills at the north end of Death Valley wash. Our plan had been to drive back to out previous camp site and camp there another night but, when we got there, it was still pretty windy. Michele led a movement to drive around until we found a dry wash where we could camp out of the wind. The first couple that we investigated were at low points in the road and I was concerned that we would get too much dust if a car came by.
At one surreal point, we were in a gully when a – seemingly – unending group of Rovers drove by. Driving even at moderate speed on a dirt road produces alot of dust, and, typically, drivers will spread out so as not to be driving in somebody else’s dust cloud. In this case, three or four Rovers – both Land and Range – would go by , quickly and grouped together driving in a mutual dust cloud with their windows rolled up and, presumably, their air conditioners on – then a space; the dust would settle, and then another group. Thinking of my poor Range Rover all alone in Minden – all alone, cold – it was very strange.
Finally, we found a suitable gully and moved in.
For Easter dinner, we had asparagus eggs, baby potatoes, and – big surprise – chocolate Easter eggs. Then we lite a campfire and watched and felt the day end.
Easter Morning, everybody slept in except for JR who was up at 6:00 AM for a couple mile walk before sunrise. The rest of us waited for the sun to warm our bags.
For Easter breakfast – tea outnumbering coffee for the first time I can remember (three to two) – we had pumpernickel bread, avocado, and chocolate Easter eggs. After some discussion, we decided to drive to Scottie’s Castle for water and then noodle around in the badlands above Ubehebe Crater. Michele and I had gone there on a trip with Laura Atkins in 2004 and wanted to explore the area a little more.
The whole Death Valley area is dryer this year than I have ever seen it. There are just no flowers, not even going over the high passes. In the valleys it looks like nothing even woke up. All the way down from Tahoe – until we ran out of light – the Sierras had almost no snow.
In 2004, there was still snow on Tin Mountain at the end of March and the rim of Ubehebe Crater was covered in poppies. It was not considered a particularly wet year.
Ubehebe Crater is at the north end of the Cottonwood Mountains and sort of separates north Death Valley Wash from Death Valley proper. The crater is about a half a mile across and – depending who you listen to – is 800 to 8,000 old. (For details, go here.)
Ubehebe was both crowded and very windy.
I was promoting getting back in the car and driving to The Racetrack – the Ranger at Scottie’s had assured me that the road had been recently regraded and should be passable in our vehicles – and come back in the afternoon when the wind might have calmed down. Michele opined It is always windy at the crater’s edge. and Courtney said I love the wind, it makes everything feel alive. We decided to wander uphill to some other, smaller, craters and badlands to get away from the crowds and see if we could find an area with a little less wind.
From the edge of one of the small craters, we could see down and across into the badlands and what looked like a route through them and off we went through newly cut gullies in the badlands.
In, rough hewn land, an excellent book about the geological formation of the Western United States – and a book I highly recommend, it is very, very, readable – Keith Meldahl talks about fossilized rivers in the Sierras. It seems that Nevada was once much higher – like the Tibetan Plateau now – and it was drained by huge Yukon like rivers that cut through the, then, lower Sierras. Nevada sank but the riverbeds, chocked full of rounded debris, remained. A good example is a roadcut for Interstate 80 – Michele and my favorite roadcut, by the way – near Gold Run. I think that the same thing happened in the badlands we were now exploring. We kept running into old riverbeds full of rounded rocks that were crisscrossing the beds of volcanic ash.
Climbing up the last little pitch to get out of the gully, I slipped, cutting my hand and skinning my knee. A typical minor accident that all of us have probably had as kids and many of us as adults wandering around in the wild. I am still full of high-powered blood thinners because of my Atrial Fibrillation Ablation procedure in January. Consequently, I bleed like a stuck pig.
JR had the First Aid kit and was already at the top, admiring the view, when Michele came over to tell him I had slipped. On the theory that the best thing anybody can do, when somebody is injured, is spread Calm, Michele calmly said something like Steve slipped and cut himself but he is OK. It looks much worse than it is because he is on massive blood thinners. JR walked over and then saw me bleeding. Now he heard, Steve is on massive blood thinners and is going to bleed out. or something close to that.
He went into hyper triage mode, but Michele got him calmed down and JR did a superb job of doctoring my wounds. They didn’t hurt very much and we were soon on our way. Out of the gully, now, and walking along the ridge. The view up into Upper Death Valley Wash was great but, also a little worrying for me. It was raining over the mountains to the north of us and still pretty windy.
The women continued up the ridge to the top of a large hill while JR and I stayed at the midpoint (I suspect JR stayed with me in case I passed out from blood loss or something, but is too much of a gentleman to admit it).
Driving out of Eureka Valley, we listened to a selection of music picked out by Courtney. As we drove past canyons just begging to be explored on a future trip, the music added the perfect enhancement.
Between Eureka Valley and the north end of Death Valley Wash, just before the road summit over the Last chance Range, is The Crater Mine. I have no idea when it was last actually mined but recently enough so that the boundaries of Death Valley National park were drawn around it and distant enough so that I have never driven by when it was active. The Crater Mine area has been mined for sulfur, gypsum, and sinter; all deposited by hot springs that may have been great before the mine tore everything up.
To me, The Crater Mine is to be avoided; it is a place where healthy rock is turned into ugly, deep, powder. I have probably stopped there when I first drove this road, but I don’t remember doing so. But every time I have passed the mine, I was driving. When Iver Iverson first introduced me to Death Valley, it was in my BMW Bavaria, then a GMC 4×4 pickup truck to get further off road, then a Jeep Cherokee, and – finally – a Range Rover. But this time, Courtney was driving (in a very nice Dodge pseudo SUV).
When we got to the mine, it was getting late and I said something like Oh, it’s a shitty old mine, it’s getting dark and we are running late, just keep going. Courtney turned to me and smiled, then turned into the mine area and turned off the engine. She was driving, not me. She was in control of where we went and when we stopped. It was no longer my responsibility to make sure we got to camp before dark, it was her responsibility. I was no longer in control; I was no longer the tour guide. What a relief. What a liberation! I was just one of a group of people who were wandering around the desert together, not because we wanted to be together – although we did – but because we wanted to be in the desert. Because we wanted to be here (maybe not all of us here at this mine, but here in this desert).
Both Gina and Courtney, being engineers were – in my humble opinion – inordinately interested in the mine and, at some point, I gave Gina my camera to take some shots. The following pictures are hers.
Then, in the fading light, it was on to upper Death Valley Wash to find a campsite. For dinner we had hors d’oeuvres with cocktails and wine; a salad of baby lettuces; Indian garlic rice – cooked in a pouch; and barbecued, marinated, cod. We finished the day sitting and standing around a campfire in the Weber barbecue, talking about past camping trips and how much fun we were having.
My preference is to drive to the desert, especially the deep desert, during the day. I like watching the subtle change from green to brown, and red, and yellow; from Civilization to the Great Empty. (About twenty years ago, I dropped Michele off at work and drove all day to Page, Arizona, to meet her flight that night. I had a deep feeling of where I was while Michele, having just got off the plane, wasn’t even sure which way was north.) On this trip, we left Bishop at about 10:00 PM after a late dinner and drove south to Big Pine where we turned east to drive into the White Mountains just as a large moon was rising.
When we entered Eureka Valley, it was bright enough to get a sense of the vastness of the valley – really a graben – but not bright enough to easily spot the camping spot I had planned on. What we did find worked great and, after a leisurely breakfast we went south about ten miles on the Eureka Dune Road to the Eureka Dunes (duh!).
JR had already been up since before sunrise and had gone for a long walk and his enthusiasm, added to Gina and Courtney’s. I have been going to the desert – mostly Death Valley, but also The Mojave National Preserve, Anzo Borrego State Park, Northwestern Nevada, and assorted other places like the Moroccan Sahara – since the early 70’s when Iver Iverson introduced me to Death Valley and I Had a religious conversion as my very ex-wife so disparagingly put it. Michele and I got married there. But it has been hard to get friends to share my wonder, my fervor.
Over the years, I have tried, dragging people there with promises of subtle wonders. Their reactions have ranged from This is nice, let’s do it again, I’ll call you, don’t call me. to Ugh? nice, I guess, but windy, to Where are the trees? to Can we go home now? ; but Gina and Courtney were the first people in a long time that caught the excitement that Michele and I share.
Meanwhile, back in Eureka Valley, the Eureka Dunes are the highest dunes in California – which may be akin to being the longest earthworm or heaviest crow, interesting but not very important – at 680 feet above the dry lakebed they sit in (they look smaller because the surrounding Last Chance Range towers over them).
We drove to the west side of the dunes, nearest the highest point and furthest from the crowded parking lot – it was packed, there must have been five cars – on the theory that we would climb to the top. I had climbed to the top, once, over twenty years ago where I ran into a guy who climbed to the almost-top with skis. He was going to ski down the steepest part, but it was a failure (for him, fun to watch for us). Everybody packed lots of water – as the temp was climbing – Gina and Michele brought snacks, and we set off across the dry lakebed to the dunes.
Sand dunes are caused by the wind (in the desert, atleast). The wind scours the desert, picking up sand and dust. On a very windy day, so much is in the air that we can’t see across the valley, but – as the wind bumps up against a mountain and slows down – it looses its carrying capacity, dropping its cargo of sand and dust. Over time – alot of time, one grain of sand at a time – the sand and dust has built a dune 680 feet high and, maybe, a mile long. The shape of the dunes is governed by the shape of the surrounding topography that is slowing down the wind so it has been pretty much the same since the invention of the camera.
When we got into the dunes, we began to see and feel their complexity. In some places, they were hard and in other places almost too soft to get anywhere. Here would be a pattern and over there a smooth wall. On the otherside of a ridge, a valley going all the way down to the lake bed.
And, as we climbed, the changing view of the Eureka Valley and the Last Chance range open up.
I stopped climbing first, choosing, after our snack break to sit on a nice warm ridge and take an afternoon nap while everybody else kept at it.
JR and Michele got the furthest, both of them – as far as I can tell – switching to barefoot sand-walking. At least they were both barefoot when they got back down to my level; JR reporting an equipment malfunction and Michele just seemed to like walking barefoot in warm sand. Then it was time to put the shoes back on, dust the sand from our butts – in my case, atleast – walk back to the cars, drive over the Last Chance Range to Upper Death Valley Wash, and find a place to camp.
I am sitting at my computer with tears running down my face. I guess it is technically called crying. Not exactly crying in Joy, but very far from crying in anguish. I started crying when I saw the picture above. But first I saw this picture.
