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Deep in the belly of Death Valley, I pitched my tent up against sage bushes looking out at snow capped mountains. Campers sat in their vehicles, some huddled in their tents early, all dodging the relentless wind. One guy had his tent set up on top of his truck’s cab. I wondered what he knew that the rest of us ground dwellers didn’t.
The camp ground host came by to get my ticket. When I asked him how he was doing said that he was “ tiered-er than the wind” and that I would feel that way too if I had been in Death Valley for six month as he had been. Said, as he glanced down at my license plates, that although he too was originally from Maryland, he couldn’t wait to head back home to Oregon at the end of the month.
There was no denying that the wind was strong, but I had camped in all kinds of wind since being in California. Folks scampered from their vehicles into their tents as soon as the sun set. I fell asleep to the sounds of the couple next to me talking softly to one another as couples do at the end of day and finally to the roar of the wind violently slapping my tent. I woke up to them making love at dawn with a gentle cold breeze blowing off the mountains into the valley.
As I laid there listening to the sounds of a new day dawning, I imagined the early vagabonds huddled beneath their encircled wagons. I recalled those first expositions in search of wealth and land, of the few women who left behind all their possessions, including babies, to trek across the snowbound Sierras in pounds of skirts on makeshift snowshoes on the wild hope of finding the husbands that had proceeded them and hadn’t returned.
Sobering thoughts with which to begin a day, but the springtime majesty that Death Valley exudes softens and lifts the spirits. After exploring the Crater at dawn then touring Scotty’s Castle all morning, (including the cellar tour of the underground tunnels and innovative engineering systems), and after an afternoon spent walking the Salt Flats at Badwater and catching the sunset at Dante’s View, I camped at 100 feet below sea level. I was again within view of snow capped mountains, but this time I was surrounded by boy scouts and their parents.
Tidbits of conversations floated through the night: “My gynecologist says,” “There are so many stars”, “That would be like Clinton…” There was an older couple next to me already in their tent talking to one another in flirty terms as if they were new lovers, which they may well have been. Life forges on, in one way or another and love happens, regardless of age or distance or misfortunes.
Shortly after dawn the following day, I met an ex Marine at the trail head of Mosaic Canyon. He had long curly hair and a full beard, was young and sweet. We chatted for a bit in the shade of his car while he waited for friends. As love happens, so too do connections.
After speaking with him for a while, I spent the remainder of the day thinking of trauma and how we as humans survive it. I thought of the horrors experienced by the infamous if not ill-fated Donner Party. How when found months after the snow locked passes to the high Sierra’s began to melt, the starving survivors were emotionally lingering on the brink of reality. Doesn’t matter much what traumatizes us—trauma is trauma and cannibalism would certainly do it for me.
What I find so interesting is how we—most of us—manage to survive the unthinkable. It doesn’t take a specialist to tell me that it takes great courage sometimes to live, let alone survive this life. It takes extreme courage to embark into the unknown whether with ambivalent dreams of wealth and fortune or with the conviction that one’s weapons and power bring freedom to the oppressed. Because we never know at the onset whether the outcome will be what we had anticipated.
It was high noon when I arrived at the Dunes. I had meant to hike them either early or late in the day given the blazing sunshine, but c’est la vie. I aimed my sights on the largest, farthest dune trudging past people of all shades speaking numerous languages and imagined those wagon trains must have sounded similarly. The predominately foreign men who had emigrated from all around the globe to cross the wilds west of the Mississippi lured by gold and land grants and who were fortunate enough to survive only served to encourage hundreds of thousands to follow in the mass migration westward. Only one in twenty of those early trekkers had been women.
Eventually out hiking the throngs of tourists, I sat drinking water on the highest crest with my back to the crowds now far behind me looking out at the length of the valley and at the wildflowers just beginning to climb up the mountain slopes. I scanned the areas I had already hiked for familiar landmarks. A breeze blew my sweat dampened hair off my neck and I leaned back to rest on my elbows. Although it was only March, the sand was hot on the surface. I dug down to the cooler sand below for comfort and was reveling in the silence and solitude of the forty mile long--five mile wide Valley pondering survival when I heard them.
A group of people had dragged an air mattress out even further than I had walked and were –of all things-- filming themselves sliding down the hills of ancient sand. At first I wasn’t sure what it was they were dragging. But, using my camera’s super zoom lens, I could clearly see that it was a queen sized navy blue inflated air mattress. It took several goes before they determined that they’d be better off with the felt side up.
That’s it isn’t it. The key to how we do it. We survive because above all the sordidness we experience over the years we are compelled to want to feel the lightness of being alive and can’t seem to resist the joy of laughter. We’ll devise the most extreme silliness if only to put the incomprehensible nonsense into perspective. We may not ever forget our nightmares, but we are driven to diminish them by creating new and brighter memories. We survive because we are dreamers who believe there must be something better just over that next crest, because we tell ourselves we are deserving. We know that after night day comes with a kaleidoscope sunrise of fantastic potential spanning off towards the horizon. So, we convince ourselves to keep getting up in the morning, and strapping on our shoes, and putting one foot in front of the other regardless of yesterday, in spite of today, ever hopeful for tomorrow.
Deep in the belly of Death Valley, I pitched my tent up against sage bushes looking out at snow capped mountains. Campers sat in their vehicles, some huddled in their tents early, all dodging the relentless wind. One guy had his tent set up on top of his truck’s cab. I wondered what he knew that the rest of us ground dwellers didn’t.
The camp ground host came by to get my ticket. When I asked him how he was doing said that he was “ tiered-er than the wind” and that I would feel that way too if I had been in Death Valley for six month as he had been. Said, as he glanced down at my license plates, that although he too was originally from Maryland, he couldn’t wait to head back home to Oregon at the end of the month.
There was no denying that the wind was strong, but I had camped in all kinds of wind since being in California. Folks scampered from their vehicles into their tents as soon as the sun set. I fell asleep to the sounds of the couple next to me talking softly to one another as couples do at the end of day and finally to the roar of the wind violently slapping my tent. I woke up to them making love at dawn with a gentle cold breeze blowing off the mountains into the valley.
As I laid there listening to the sounds of a new day dawning, I imagined the early vagabonds huddled beneath their encircled wagons. I recalled those first expositions in search of wealth and land, of the few women who left behind all their possessions, including babies, to trek across the snowbound Sierras in pounds of skirts on makeshift snowshoes on the wild hope of finding the husbands that had proceeded them and hadn’t returned.
Sobering thoughts with which to begin a day, but the springtime majesty that Death Valley exudes softens and lifts the spirits. After exploring the Crater at dawn then touring Scotty’s Castle all morning, (including the cellar tour of the underground tunnels and innovative engineering systems), and after an afternoon spent walking the Salt Flats at Badwater and catching the sunset at Dante’s View, I camped at 100 feet below sea level. I was again within view of snow capped mountains, but this time I was surrounded by boy scouts and their parents.
Tidbits of conversations floated through the night: “My gynecologist says,” “There are so many stars”, “That would be like Clinton…” There was an older couple next to me already in their tent talking to one another in flirty terms as if they were new lovers, which they may well have been. Life forges on, in one way or another and love happens, regardless of age or distance or misfortunes.
Shortly after dawn the following day, I met an ex Marine at the trail head of Mosaic Canyon. He had long curly hair and a full beard, was young and sweet. We chatted for a bit in the shade of his car while he waited for friends. As love happens, so too do connections.
After speaking with him for a while, I spent the remainder of the day thinking of trauma and how we as humans survive it. I thought of the horrors experienced by the infamous if not ill-fated Donner Party. How when found months after the snow locked passes to the high Sierra’s began to melt, the starving survivors were emotionally lingering on the brink of reality. Doesn’t matter much what traumatizes us—trauma is trauma and cannibalism would certainly do it for me.
What I find so interesting is how we—most of us—manage to survive the unthinkable. It doesn’t take a specialist to tell me that it takes great courage sometimes to live, let alone survive this life. It takes extreme courage to embark into the unknown whether with ambivalent dreams of wealth and fortune or with the conviction that one’s weapons and power bring freedom to the oppressed. Because we never know at the onset whether the outcome will be what we had anticipated.
It was high noon when I arrived at the Dunes. I had meant to hike them either early or late in the day given the blazing sunshine, but c’est la vie. I aimed my sights on the largest, farthest dune trudging past people of all shades speaking numerous languages and imagined those wagon trains must have sounded similarly. The predominately foreign men who had emigrated from all around the globe to cross the wilds west of the Mississippi lured by gold and land grants and who were fortunate enough to survive only served to encourage hundreds of thousands to follow in the mass migration westward. Only one in twenty of those early trekkers had been women.
Eventually out hiking the throngs of tourists, I sat drinking water on the highest crest with my back to the crowds now far behind me looking out at the length of the valley and at the wildflowers just beginning to climb up the mountain slopes. I scanned the areas I had already hiked for familiar landmarks. A breeze blew my sweat dampened hair off my neck and I leaned back to rest on my elbows. Although it was only March, the sand was hot on the surface. I dug down to the cooler sand below for comfort and was reveling in the silence and solitude of the forty mile long--five mile wide Valley pondering survival when I heard them.
A group of people had dragged an air mattress out even further than I had walked and were –of all things-- filming themselves sliding down the hills of ancient sand. At first I wasn’t sure what it was they were dragging. But, using my camera’s super zoom lens, I could clearly see that it was a queen sized navy blue inflated air mattress. It took several goes before they determined that they’d be better off with the felt side up.
That’s it isn’t it. The key to how we do it. We survive because above all the sordidness we experience over the years we are compelled to want to feel the lightness of being alive and can’t seem to resist the joy of laughter. We’ll devise the most extreme silliness if only to put the incomprehensible nonsense into perspective. We may not ever forget our nightmares, but we are driven to diminish them by creating new and brighter memories. We survive because we are dreamers who believe there must be something better just over that next crest, because we tell ourselves we are deserving. We know that after night day comes with a kaleidoscope sunrise of fantastic potential spanning off towards the horizon. So, we convince ourselves to keep getting up in the morning, and strapping on our shoes, and putting one foot in front of the other regardless of yesterday, in spite of today, ever hopeful for tomorrow.