I Walk In The Valley of the Shadow of Death
Death Valley. A terrain known to all to be fierce in its characteristics, from flash floods and despairing dryness to its poisonous desert residents of rattlesnakes, black widow spiders, and scorpions. It is the largest National Park outside of Alaska, and its vastness changes dramatically with its geology. Below sea level we walked on the salt flats - a sea of Borax that stretched around us in a lattice of sparkling white.This was the Badwater Basin, and we got to visit it with hardly any visitors. Mountains edged the road, and like most drives through Death Valley, opened up to a never ending valley of salt, sand, or a rocky opening speckled with the emerging wildflowers.
Visiting Death Valley during a time of quarantine had its benefits. It was social distancing at its best, and all parking lots, camp sites, and visitor centers, were closed. To go into Death Valley then was to bring food and water with you, find your own bathroom behind the boulders, and see the sites by car and off road hiking. Luckily that is the best way to see this place anyway - seeing everything by car in a day was difficult enough! One camp site, Panamint, was open to us luckily, and we arrived to it late Friday night. Setting up our tent under a sea of stars was our first impression of Death Valley, and we were given a taste of its sense of enormity. By the next day, waking up with the desert and the mountains in the distance and driving only a fraction of it, we were humbled by its largeness. Never was there a better time to embrace our planet, and all that comes with it. To feel that life is absolutely fleeting, just as we walked the many trails that so many people decades ago lived and died while mining.
Artists Way was a playground of mountains that were lined with vibrant colors from the layered minerals. We did photoshoots with Boo who was such a trooper with the rocky terrain. She loved our stop to the Mesquite Dunes, were we got to run amuck on what felt like endless stretches of sand. At Golden Canyon Boo slept in the car while we got to climb the rocks and walk the fortress-like pathways into the canyon. At Zabriskie Point we got to see the sun set with stunning views of an incredible phenomenon: layered mountains formed through centuries of water erosion and earthquakes.
Death Valley stands as my favorite National Park, with its diverse and unforgiving landscape. It was stunning in every direction, and holds so many secrets. Gold was found here, amongst other minerals. On our way out of the Valley we stopped at the Ballarat Ghost Town, a place that serviced many of the miners during it glory days. Today the jail stands still in its original form, where as the stoney school house, post office, and resident homes have only remnants of their structure still in place. People live on it still who take care of it and protect it, but its silent surroundings and far away nook gave it a gravity that made me breathless.
