Conclusion

 

Map of a journey.  
For details see Michael Angerman’s map which he prepared as I wandered.  
Google Map Link 

Mountain Surgery

 

When water runs off a mountain and flows out into the broad lowland of Death Valley, it does not slip peacefully or slowly, filling the valley gracefully with sediment.  It rushes in torrents, cutting gashes into solid rock.   

Infrequent, but violent thunderstorms have carved these mountains.  They begin with rain that flows slowly and gently into the canyons, but then a violent, and dangerous for hikers, change occurs.   

As the flow increases, the velocity of water in the canyon increases, overtaking the early flow and gathering it into a great mass of water flowing at high speed—a deluge that comes crashing down the canyon as a massive torrent.  

Thunderstorms have done so infrequently, but millions of times for millions of years.  The result is often a deep surgical cut into the mountain.  

To walk into a slot canyon formed in this way is a trip deep into mountain construction and destruction, to see how the rocks appeared millions of years ago and how the water has cut then down.  

Sometimes the walls of the slot canyon become unstable and great boulders crash down into it.  Sometimes they block the way of a curious explorer. 

When possible, I climb over such boulders, or slither under them to see what lies beyond.  

And sometimes what is revealed staggers the imagination as to how such a magnificent cathedral could have formed.  

The Badlands

There was a time not so long ago when I would rise up early and go to the land surveying office to teach a class in Basic Surveying Computations. The survey crews gathered at eight in the morning to assemble gear and head for the field.  About forty people in six crews, mostly low pay workers who pounded stakes, pulled chain, held rod, or flagged traffic.  If one of them showed promise, he or she could become note-taker.  But the six crew chiefs reigned over them and made the big money.  They did all the calculations and turned all the angles with theodolites. 

I arrived at seven, so that anyone could learn to calculate like a crew chief.  They did so on their own time and my own time.  It was not part of my job. 

All this was before computers eliminated the need to know trigonometry, traverse closure, corrections for the earth’s curvature and for the atmosphere’s refraction.  Computations were done with handheld calculators which contained the trigonometric functions to eight decimal places, a big improvement from the books I used to use.

Reward came, not in money, but in thanks from a few who made the effort, learned, and were thereby closer to promotion.  But reward was not the goal, reciprocity was, and still is.  I have received so much from the world—its people, its plants, animals, and rocks—that a little sacrifice feels appropriate.

Beware the Jabberwock

Today I give you the Badlands of Death Valley, a name having two dismal-sounding words.  To the credit of the stewards of this low and hot place, hiking trails extend into the worst parts of the national park along with the best.  I hiked some of them and bring you pictures for your adjudication on the badness and deathness of this place.

How Well I Remember Sand Dunes

 

August 21, 2010 in the evening

Wind has eroded sand from the mountains around Death Valley and carried it southward for thousands of years.  It flows unimpeded until it hits a mountain that slows its speed, causing sand to settle out and accumulate.  Eddie currents of wind circle around Tucki Mountain reshaping the piles of sand a little more with every windstorm.  But the dunes remain trapped in this general area.  

May 4, 2021 - in the morning

Memory is like a sand dune shifting with time.  Today, as I trekked in the Mesquite Dunes where I trekked on August 21, 2010 just before sunset, I tried to remember.  I maneuvered that trailless labyrinth of loose sand along the same route, not feeling certain it was the same.  I remembered a certain high dune and a location from which I had photographed it.  Eleven years of change in both the dunes and my recollection of them became a study in our likenesses and differences—me with my memory, dunes with new shapes.  

Tucki Mountain

These two dated pictures show what I think is the same high dune.  I think so with memory changed because I have changed, and reduced by what I have forgotten.  The pictures show a similar but not identical dune, not exactly what it was, but recognized. 

This dune is like an old friend not seen in eleven years or more with whom I have reunited.  We are different, but we find enough likeness to believe we can still communicate.   

Michael Angerman has started a map of the places I stay on this trip.  The map will not change for a while as I stay in Beatty, Nevada, for about two weeks.   Google Map Link 

To see the New World

 

It has something to do with the Valley of the Shadow of Death.  As Hobbs said,

 “ The passions that incline us to peace are: fear-of-death and hope-for-commodious living”  And I ask, how does the notion of peace change through eleven years of aging?        

 

The land changes and I change.  I go to where I was eleven years ago, to find a new me and a new world.  It’s Nature and my nature that I wish compare, both in how they evolve and how their relationship evolves.  For example, the hiking rule of thirds, which says that the middle third of any hike is hardest.  It’s a rule gleaned from years of hiking, more a part of my nature than of Nature, and yet the two connect.  It’s as though someone takes notice of who is flourishing and who is not, and at what stages of life and hikes flourishing best happen.    

 

As a tree is not fooled by a midwinter thaw into opening its buds too early and letting tender young leaves freeze, and as it does so without eyes or nose or nerves, yet it knows what to do and when to do it.  A forestry graduate should have a better idea of how a tree does this.  And what of the rocks that I so admire and talk about at length in geologic time and at length of scientific data.  Are they too involved in the treeness of knowing and the humanness of hiking?  These things I want to learn.    

 

I know what I was doing in 2010 in Death Valley, and I know what I was doing one morning long ago in Tennessee as the full moon rose on a freezing evening, throwing shadows of the trees along our graveled driveway, all of them matched in girth and form, along its curving edge.  These stories are linked in this valley of death—she whom I was and she whom I am.

Looking at the trail again, I may roll my eyes and groan, or I may face its middle third with hope and understanding.  The work will never be easy.