6. Alive in Death Valley

One more place that lives beyond words

In this case, I think I’ll let an ancient seafloor do most of the talking for me:

I am confident that “death valley” was only death valley to the miners and settlers who had but one thing on their mind: money. The Tishimba Shoshone nation certainly don’t see it as death valley any more than they see it as life valley.

There is plenty of animal life — its just that the fauna refuse to come out and play on command. The bighorn sheep and roadrunners and coyotes have their own lives to lead, little games of chicken everywhere: who eats what little food can be found? Who starves? Who finds shelter? Who faces towering wind-barrels of sand alone, out on the exposed breccia and sheer cliff-faces of oxidizing minerals?

Geologic activity couldn’t care less what we think of life or death. This slurry, this salt-muck, is the result of an endless interchange between wet and dry. The water rushes down, dries out, and leaches minerals out with it… sodium chloride. Table salt. Growing, everywhere.

I honestly have nothing to say about this moonscape. What is there to add, that the sky doesn’t say? It’s here. We are nothing but looking up and hoping for some indication that we belong, somewhere, in this masterpiece. Beats me what the answer is. I just like looking up from time to time.

Yours in adventure,

-A