Death Valley

Mesquite Sand Dunes

Mesquite Sand Dunes

Mesquite Sand Dunes

Mesquite Sand Dunes

I-385, Eastern Sierra Nevada's in the horizon

I-385

The town of Lone Pine, CA

California's tallest Mountain, Mt. Whitney, straight ahead

Death Valley Campsite underneath bristlecone pines

Death Valley

Look Mom! I'm ontop of the world!

This is not a mythological creature. It's the killer Jackalope.

Death Valley

Death Valley

Salt Flats

Death Valley

My descent into Death Valley lasted late into the evening. There's something mystical and inspiring about riding in the desert under the cover of night...you're completely alone, there's a soothing silence and the tapestry of stars above sparkle like gems. I felt like a bedouin journeying deep into the heart of the arabian desert searching for lost treasures and ancient cities. The desert is where time stops and boundaries seize to exist. It's a place to get lost and be found; a place where the realities of survival are severe and tangible, but also where we can be healed from our insatiable need to control and compartmentalize. During my travels, the desert has become not a place of loneliness and fear, but a place of meditation, reflection and healing. It has become a place where I can go to be alone, look up at the heavenly hosts stretched out like a canopy above me and know...really know in my heart of hearts....that I'm not alone...none of us are ever alone. The mental castles and fortified walls of all my anxieties and self-constructed illusions come crashing down into the desert floor and all that is left are dunes of sand and heaps of rock...the desert brings me back to square one, the beginning, the end, infinity. It is in this place where childhood wonder and awe are free to grow and be cultivated...where I can grasp how small, fragile and insignificant yet special we all are and what a priviledge it is just to be alive.

Death Valley; it's such a threatening name. When 49ers came through Death Valley during the California gold rush, they barely survived its unbearable heat and hundreds of miles of step mountain walls and dry valley floors. Death Valley can reach temperatures up to 135 F in July, and is on average, the hottest place on earth. Interestingly enough, I didn't sense the shadow of death in the valley, but quite the opposite - the smell, sights, and sounds of life were all around me..I noticed the many scorpian and rattlesnake tracks left in the sand, the ravens and condors circling above, the wild coyotes howling at the moon. Despite the name, this place was brimming with life.

That night, I set my tent up far away from any other camper inside an enclosure of bristlecone pine trees ontop of a smooth, flat plane of warm sand. Before I went to sleep I decided to lay out and watch the beautiful and almost other worldly diplay of stars, meteorites, and satellites. The night sky in the desert, away from the city lights and noise of traffic, is a completely different nocturnal sky view than out east. There are stars within stars within stars...so many so densely compacted that look like clouds of dust. You can watch tiny dots, which are satellites, move horizontally across the sky then disappear as they follow the curvature of the earth. Perhaps most exciting, is the shooting star or metorite firework show that goes off every 10 minutes or so. On one occasion, I saw a meteorite with a comit-like tail enter and burn up in the atmosphere...this huge fire ball moved across the sky...I watched it as it was incinerated within seconds, bursting through the earth's atomphere. I was so excited I started to cheer and laugh...I almost cried like the "double-rainbow" guy....After the big show, I decided to get some shut eye. I fell asleep rather quickly but woke up about 3 in the morning to the sound of coyotes in a frenzy, not far from my tent...at first I was startled and a bit affraid because they sounded like laughing hyenas who haven't eaten in a while. They would all start laughing and howling all at once and gradually get louder and louder until it became somewhat intense....then, all of a sudden, they would all stop in unison. It was pretty freaky...but I got over the fear rather quickly when I realized that I never read one account of a pack of coyotes killing anyone in their tent...so I dozed off despite the feeding frenzy figuring that they weren't even aware of me...still for me to sleep through that, I must have been really exhausted!

The next morning I woke up with all all ten fingers and ten toes...no coyote attacks. I got a cup of coffee and breakfast in the little town outside the campsite called Furance Creek. From there I set out to hike the salt flats, mesquite sand dunes, and mountain ranges surrounding the valley. What's fascinating about Death Valley is the magnitude and stark variations in all the topography. You really can't understand or appreciate it unless your there...

After passing through the last ghost town in Death Valley call Panamint, I rode out to California interstate 385 North, parrallel to the amazing and already snow capped Sierra Nevada's. I arrived in Bishop, CA late in the evening where the temperatures fell into the low 30's....because I didn't bring the proper sleeping bag for below 40 degree temps, I got a cheap motel room and decided to catch up on wash that night at the local laundromat.