Dead Horse Canyon

A long walk, mostly alone.

After climbing a few more faltering steps, I fell forward.

I didn’t really fall, actually. It was more like I leaned, rather suddenly, against the steep rise in front of me. My backpack swung around and thudded against the soft dirt. I lay on my side.

I didn’t get up for quite a while. There wasn’t any reason to. The loose soil was warm and dry. My legs would eventually carry me higher — but not now. I slid my camera from where it hung on my pack harness.

I hadn’t yet realized that I was off course — that I’d started climbing out of the canyon too soon. Later, when I reached the summit, I’d be able to see it easily. If I’d only scrambled another quarter mile through the willows crowding the canyon floor, I could have reached a much lower and easier-to-climb saddle.

But then I would have missed these flowers, and this graceful arc of sky, and the feel of the warm dry dirt on my cheek.

It was only noon.

I thought about water: I was hauling two and half liters, collected from the spring below. It should be enough, I thought, to make it all the way to Cottonwood Springs, even if I missed the spring that my map said was somewhere on the other side of this hill. But you really don’t want to run out, not here in this trail-less part of Death Valley National Park. No one comes this way very often, and even if someone did pass this way, they might miss you up here, off course, lying in the dry wash among the wildflowers.

I thought of how the desert is a benign place to hike and camp. At least, it can be in the spring. Since a storm two nights ago, the days had been clear. Cool breezes broke up the mid-day heat. The nights had been chilly and still, except for the down-canyon winds just after sunset.

I thought about how just last night I had put my sandals on and walked in the dark a long way from where my tent was pitched, up some nameless side-canyon, until I stopped there in the brush and waited for whatever creature was calling in a soft and gargled screech all around the hillsides.

(Bats. It was bats. I walked by starlight the long way back to camp.)

Lying on the hillside, now, I thought of the last two days’ wonders: The polished rock in canyon narrows. Petroglyphs. Wildflowers increasing, in abundance and diversity, as I reached higher elevations. The crunch of my footsteps on coarse sand. The giant cottonwood that marked last night’s camp. Waterfalls and oases. Solitude.

I was dozing.

I shook myself awake. Feeling strangely refreshed, I pushed on to the top of the ridge.

The Cottonwood Basin stretched before me, perhaps five miles wide and three times as long. I could already see across to the place, about midway down its length, where a network of ruts and rivulets converged on a break in its eastern escarpment. That would be Cottonwood Springs. I started down.

This was easy walking: down washes, through sparse vegetation, my steps like a metronome, the rock outcrops gliding slowly by, my thoughts in a singsong rhythm.

Walking even a short distance can help calm the spirit. But walking a longer distance has a more profound effect: there is some kind of wisdom that lives in tired bones. One avoids fools’ errands, loathes chasing rainbows, and doesn’t care to tread on anyone else’s toes. By mid-afternoon, I was halfway to the springs, getting sunburned despite the SPF 30, and was, for the moment, very wise indeed.

As I neared the springs I saw people coming — the first in two days. It was a couple, and they were not getting along. She wanted to ask questions; he was in a hurry to get going. And no wonder: It was three in the afternoon, and they were headed for the same spring where I’d camped the night before — twelve miles away. Well, maybe six or seven miles away if you went straight into the mountains and threaded your way through without getting lost and knew where you were when you climbed down the other side into the canyon and didn’t miss the spring entirely or fall over a cliff in the dark. He had a map and was saying, repeatedly: “This is the way it says in the book. And the ranger said this was the way to go.” I wished them well and continued on my way.

A party of 15 was camped near the springs. I complained to a young woman about the noise her companions were making, and headed for a private spot to bathe. On the way back, and feeling much better, I apologized for having been so grumpy. Meredith told me the group was from the Sierra Institute at UC-Santa Cruz. They were studying philosophy, religion, and eco-psychology (different from psycho-ecology, I guess) during their 10-day wilderness retreat. We had a nice chat about watershed management, the historical development of the idea of wilderness, and the human history of the Death Valley region. Then I headed off to snap some magic-hour pictures of the wildflowers.

It was dark by the time I had dinner ready. I pulled the sleeping bag and pad out of the tent. I leaned the pad against an obliging rock, sat down heavily, and pulled the sleeping bag over my legs. I was half asleep by the time I’d finished eating. I watched the stars. I felt uncomplicated and at ease.

In the morning my right ankle hurt.

I’d walked a mile or so down-canyon when I realized it wasn’t anything serious — just a case of plantars fasciitis. Still, walking the last 13-mile leg of this loop route — even if most of it was on a rutted canyon road — wasn’t going to be much fun.

I’d driven this same canyon two years ago. Despite my discomfort, I enjoyed it so much more walking. I forced myself not to limp — that would probably throw something else out of joint — and eventually the endorphins kicked in, and I was rolling along, skin baking in the now-fierce sun, taking breaks in the cool shadows of high canyon walls, listening to the swoosh of a raven’s wings overhead.

When I got to the truck, parked in the confluence of two canyons, it was hot as hell. I dumped the two remaining canteens of turbid, mineral-rich spring water onto the gravelly ground, drunk deeply from what I’d left behind in the carboy, and drove a few hundred yards into a narrows.

I pulled out a camp chair, put my feet up, and sat watching the afternoon shadows creep across the rock face before me. I really didn’t want to leave.

But I did, and was soon speeding across the floor of Death Valley roiling a huge cloud of dust in my wake. I stopped and picked up a six-pack at the Stovepipe Wells convenience store, and headed for Mike and Laura’s place.

I’d met Mike one Saturday afternoon in November 2001 at Big Bell Mine, in the Funeral Mountains. He does information technology for the park.

I followed his directions: past the CALTRANS maintenance center, over a rise, and suddenly the desert yielded a quintessential suburban neighborhood: Cars and pickup trucks parked outside plain 1960s-era bungalows. A few paved streets. Some trees. Yards scattered with kids toys. It could have been Hayward, or Santa Rosa.

It was neighborhood potluck night. After I gratefully showered and changed clothes, I wandered over to his neighbor’s house. About 40 people were on a moonlit patio overlooking Death Valley’s seasonal salt lake.

I listened in on several conversations. Everyone worked for the NPS, or else for Xanterra Corp., which runs the Furnace Creek Lodge and Furnace Creek Inn. People were talking about their jobs, neighbors past and present, or just passing the evening with light banter. It felt so pleasant and collegial.

After talking with Mike and Laura late into the night, I drove toward a favorite park-and-sleep spot up on Monarch Canyon Road. I thought about the little community of people I’d met. It was so ordinary, but so different. The biologists and bartenders and mechanics and administrators had few possessions, but enjoyed a secure income and benefits and some leisure time. They depended on each other for society. Here was a small-town street where people knew all their neighbors. It felt like America in another dimension, perhaps an America the way you wish it could be.