Wednesday, April 18, 2018

In the Desert

I have never been to the desert before. So I went. Not alone. Too risky. I joined a group of six plus three guides, hiking and camping in the Mojave Desert. Death Valley. Austere sublime nature, a landscape where everything works against you. It can kill. Even in late March, the temperature reached over 100 F. Dry. Dusty. Hardscrabble earth beneath every step. How can anything possibly live? Yet, there is life: fragile flowers bloom, orchids hide among tall stands of grass, lizards scurry from the shade of one rock to another, several female bighorn sheep graze not too far from the road. Raptors soar overhead and near to camp a peregrine calls. 

There is water, hard to find, but it is there nonetheless. Cool canyons beckon. Weaving through a series of dry falls, scrambling and chimney-ing up to the next level, back pushed against the canyon wall, legs stretched out at a ninety degree angle, hiking boots pressed against the opposing wall, each of us shimmies up fifteen or so feet to the next level, the shade of the tight canyon adequate compensation for the challenge in arriving. Three such scrambles and we arrive at a final challenge that cannot be overcome. Blocking our way was the dead-end of the canyon, a rock chimney stretching up at least fifty feet, more a sky fall than a dry fall, ending in a hole to the sky, backtracking and a rock scramble to the ridge line providing the only way out.



Millions of years, epochs in the making, the desert's age is evident in the geologic and fossil record. One of the guides uncovers a piece of coral, petrified, dating to when the future-desert sediment was laid down at the bottom of the ocean, which then became a salt sea, then a salt lake and then the Mojave.


Returning to camp that night, after dark, I had to see a man about a horse. If you don't know the expression, it is a euphemism for something one does not wish to state explicitly. I grabbed a trowel and the other gear necessary for the mission and trudged off up canyon. I had been using the same general area each morning and evening. With a near full moon overhead, I finished my business and started back to camp. Mostly I was gazing straight ahead. Normally, I would have my hiking headlamp set to red so as not to impair my night vision, but over the rocky terrain that alternated with the dry sand of the arroyo bottom, I needed the bright white light to assure I would not lose my footing. Glancing down to check my next several footfalls, a rattlesnake stared back at me, frozen in the headlamp beam that fell directly on it. It knew I was there before the light hit it. It's head was off the ground, tongue flicking the air, trying to get a taste of what it was that barred its way. It probably sensed the vibrations from my footfall before it ever saw the light.


Scary. I would have walked right into it had my light not revealed it. This was the closest I've ever come to a full size rattlesnake. I've seen young rattlers before, crossing my path at two of the trails I frequently hike close to home near San Francisco, and I was warned off by the audible rattle of what must have been an adult snake when I was walking in the Nebraska prairie outside of Scottsbluff last year on our eclipse watching trip. But this was the first time I'd ever been seriously concerned that a snake was intent on occupying the same piece of ground I was then standing on. One of us had to cede the territory.

I was about five meters away. How far can a rattlesnake strike from a full stop? In that position, I wanted to be conservative. Two body lengths? Maybe. How big was the snake? It was big, about the diameter of a Kielbasa and all S-ed up. So I had to guess. Certainly a meter. I calculated I was barely outside of its range, so I slowly arced around it, walking the upswing of a parabolic curve, increasing my distance as I moved past. Yes, the desert is  certainly full of life.

That was the final night camping and I promised myself that whatever the need I was not going up canyon again. 


We broke camp after breakfast, headed down to valley bottom, 282 feet (86 meters) below sea level. The guides had saved the tourist spots for a quick drive-by on our way back to Las Vegas for our flights home. But even those more trafficked sites are awe inspiring. It only takes a a moment and a big exhale to forget about the car and caravan tourists and perceive the desert sublime.