A Trek in the Desert

We went for a drive on Saturday, headed for Death Valley, but we didn't quite get there. Unlike the classic cartoon of the skeleton in the desert, we were just distracted by a detour. We headed straight west from Las Vegas and after crossing a small but beautiful mountain pass watched over by a big horn sheep perched on an impossibly pointy chunk of rock, we descended into an enormous valley just over the California border that stretched to the horizon in every direction. If you looked up "gawd-forsaken" in the dictionary, it would be a photo of this place. There were no curves in the road--not needed--no obstacles to this highway. Around the rim of the valley to the south were some mountains, so we turned left at that intersection (passing up the chance to buy "elk, bison or beef jerky--FRESH!!") to head over to China Ranch.

The desert is actually quite beautiful in its own way. It is so completely different from the other places I've lived---hardwood forested east-coast; chapparal/beach west-coast; alpine forest Rocky Mountain valley. In the desert you get geology--unfiltered. The variations of the earth's plates are all thrust up and exposed. It is so obvious where each layer begins and ends and sometimes a hill right next to another hill has its layers moving in a completely opposite direction and you hope that God has an IMAX so when you get to heaven you can watch the tectonic wrestling match that must have caused this.

And the colors!! There are some canyons on the west side of Vegas that have the most precise stripes of startling red sandwiched in the layers of beige and brown and tan. It's like Mother Nature made a delicious PBJ and then Father Nature accidently sat on it, curving it around with all the colored layers.

Desert plants are no less amazing. You're gazing out on a scene so stark you'd think it was the moon, when you realize that the sides of these mounds of fossilized gargantuan elephant dung(actually...hills)are dotted with tiny little bushes. The leaves are the size of a piece of oatmeal and there are teeny little flowers in the center of each leaf group just blooming away. What pollinates these flowers? How can they grow in this hill that is just a huge lump of tiny rocks cemented in place by hard pan dirt?

As we go further down the canyon between these giant dung heaps we pass by fenced-off areas with stark red warning signs to stay out of the abandoned gypsum mines that are dug out under these hills. You can see the old timbers supporting the edges of the openings that are cut way back under these mounds. Now you know why the shape of these hills is so unique---they are just huge repositories of this mineral formed under prehistoric Lake Bonneville. As the water evaporated, it left behind these lumps and gradually the desert wind blew in enough soil to form a little eco-system with the essentials to support those tiny plants able to thrive on top of a pile of gypsum. Cool.

Then we turned a corner on this road that had narrowed and become a gravel path and voila! An oasis of date palms and bamboo appears like a mirage! (A cliche--but you can see why the old prospectors had to rub their eyes in disbelief after passing through the miles of moonscape to come upon lush greens and water.)

According to the sign a Chinese man started a farm here at these springs in the 1800's and sold food to nearby mining camps. He "mysteriously" disappeared and someone else took over the property and finally in the 1980's the most recent owners have planted date palms and have a little Bed and Breakfast. The property is only about 50 acres, tops, but it is thick with trees and a couple of ramshackle buildings. A small stream runs through it that is completely obscured by reeds and cottonwoods and apparently just disappears into the ground right outside the hills of this tiny valley. The owners pipe the spring water into their orchard and use drip irrigation to keep their trees alive. They make a living, and it is a lovely place to walk around and smell the moisture and marvel that anyone stayed alive in their trek through the surrounding deserts to find it in the first place.

I found myself thinking that I was grateful my ancestors were cow milkers and chose a remote, high mountain valley that is exquisitely beautiful to establish their dynasty of genteel poverty from which I could descend. I don't think I'd have liked growing up the progeny of hard-scrabble miners in the tiny dry villages that dot this area of no-man's land on the border of California and Nevada. But, many people living here are the off-spring of those crusty old loners, and wouldn't have it any other way.