Mercury Rising

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The Air Condtioned Daydream

When people I don't like ask me about Death Valley, I tell them it’s hot. A horrible place. A lifeless hell.


When people ask me what I did to deserve a job and life in Death Valley, I nod my head in no particular direction and smile.


Similar to the nine or so adjacent mountain ranges, misconception enfolds this place with the ominous name, Death Valley. In many ways I am glad that there is such misconception. Besides simply being overlooked and forgotten, it's this misconception which so often gives an entire canyon, mountain peak, or even an entire 100 mile length of road to one human being to experience for himself, and for most of the time, even better, to only those organisms who are meant to be there, those that have painstakingly adapted to survive and reproduce with what little is present without need for synthetic containers to import chlorinated water and food grown a thousand miles or more away.


Though I am not a big fan of pavement running through the desert wilderness, I am glad of the few paved roads crossing Death Valley and all the pullouts and all the parking areas and all the gravel lots with rows of RVs--like lived in tombstones--and all the signs throughout the park, telling people what they should do, telling them what is beautiful, telling them how they should relate to each and every natural phenomenon, telling them what to take a picture of before returning to their lives, their jobs, and their televisions back home.


It isn’t that I truly like these things, but rather the function they ultimately serve. For these roads and these other developments act like fences, herding most people along a particular path. And though from behind the glass of their automobiles, with reality made even more distorted and distant by the lenses of their cameras, they see very little, and experience almost nothing, it is they who give rationale for the preservation of the rest that is lost on them. The other 99.9% of the park they will never step foot on. Designated wilderness. I am willing to give this or that road and such and such parking area and several porta-potties, in order to leave everything else as it is.


Then again, it would be simple minded to think of this "preservation" as pristine and untouched, for there are great changes taking place out there in this "untouched" land. As temperatures rise and introduced species proliferate and take over, humans continue to have their impact over every micrometer of the planet. Despite this, I often remind myself that it could be worse.


It isn’t that I don't want people to truly "experience their national parks," as the exit signs say, but more that I don't care if they do or not. It’s all there for those adventurous and free-thinking enough to seek it out. For those who have the illusion that they are coming here to experience Death Valley, and have not the mind to go beyond what the signs and pamphlets say, I may have some pity, but not empathy. As for the rest, they don't want anything more than what they get anyway.


It’s not surprising, seeing what other phenomena become commodified and marketed, stripped of their true nature, and sold on the free market, that for many American, a national park is like any other material good or event. One pays his entrance fee and then prepares to be entertained and stimulated, pleasurised purely by sight and sound. And so they are, and with frantic grasping at the beauty that surrounds them, they capture its light in their little boxes, leaving behind the true soul of the rocks, plants, and sky.


Trying to see everything all at once, each sight given a brief moment of attention, reality becomes the past before it ever occurs, and one sees nothing.


It becomes only about earning, gaining, and winning. Crossing another destination off the map and having the right to brag. The pride of conquer, no matter how superficial,


Those very few times when I've both displayed my identity as a park employee and also worked where other people were strolling about, I was repeatedly struck by the similarity in people's questions along the trail, such as "so, what is there to see here?" or "so, when do we get to it?" I usually come up with something appropriate to say. But I sadly realize that they seek only spectacle, and I have no good advice for them. It’s impossible to lead a person to the place they are already standing.


In order to experience one's national park, its not necessary to be alone, or to hike ten miles up a canyon that no one ever enters, or even to scale a death defying dry fall. It may be required that one be hot or sweaty, or to feel nothing but gravel or sand under your feet for extended periods of time. To be burnt by the sun, stung by a scorpion, attacked by a cholla cactus. To discover a tiny flower beneath a boxthorn, seek the thin and pathetic shade of a creosote bush, or to hear nothing but your footsteps, heartbeat, breath, and wicked thoughts for seconds, hours, or even days at a time. It can be any one or any combination of these things. It can take all week, or just all day, or can happen for a fraction of a second. I'm not sure what the difference is, but I do know that when I go out into the desert in Death Valley, I dissolve. I am driven to bliss and I am driven to madness simultaneously. I fully absorb the silence, the screaming winds, the contrasting colors and the starkness. I feel the water being violently sucked from every pore in my body. I taste the salt in the air. I collect sand in my ears. I marvel at the gargantuan lifeless mass of rock and the scattered, briefly vibrant, and clinging life: the glittering flowers, the silvery-green of sun baked leaves. I relive the billions of years of geological forces and biological evolution which bring me to each moment. I am beaten down by the sun and am lifted upwards off the valley floor when I lay on my back at night and watch myself spin through the universe. And When I do get back to my vehicle, turn on the music and glide softly home to my white-walled box I rent from the U.S. government, I’ll admit I do feel relieved. I feel comfortable and thankful, but I also feel weak. I feel like a pathetic and limited creature in a land far too great to truly exist in. Like giving up each time. Out of water. Out of food. Thirsty for beer and grease. Companionship. When I get back after any length of time in the desert, I feel many things, but humbleness seems to dominate.


Dirtiness is not an accurate measure of experience either, but still, after three or four days in the backcountry I often go straight to Furnace Creek after dropping off the GOV and my gear. While I sit in the restaurant before my plate of meat, grease, cheese, and salt, I feel many eyes upon me. Red faced, mangled hair, salt-crusted sweat stains on my shirt, body odor nearly an insecticide… to the clean and proper tourists who spent the entire day in their air-conditioned daydreams and now eat fresh greens and juicy meat in an over-priced restaurant, I must seem like Charles Manson. Even with the weight of their eyes on me, I feel only slightly out of place in the restaurant, knowing that the 3.5 million acres of what surrounds this building--this false environment--is really where I am, where I've been all day. Along with the food I voraciously swallow, I feel the desert in every inch of my tired and sun-burnt body, and I slowly digest my experience.

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For a slide show of higher quality photos click here

Desert Delirium: Hallucinations on the Sea of Sand

This morning, as well as periodically throughout the night, I wake up in the back of a government owned Ford Explorer parked before the massive mountains of sand at the south end of Eureka Valley. Odors of sweaty socks and last night’s dinner on my stainless steel pot, mingle together. A red LED light from the fake car alarm flashes on the windshield. An inexplicable whistle, like a cheap plastic flute, plays in the wind. I endure this all with paralysis that often follows deep and dreamless sleep. Typically, I don’t have the insulation and protection of a vehicle while I sleep and this morning I am not so thankful.


Each time I came to last night, there was a new angle of moon, sometimes higher, sometimes lower in the sky than before, ever-shining through the vehicle’s tinted windows, confounding my biorhythms even further than the recent Day Light Savings change. Though for many mornings now, I have struggled to rise against my body’s will, I am thankful for this arbitrary change in how we number the moments of our day. No more evenings will I crawl into my sleeping bag at 5:30 PM, with the sun sunk far beneath the mountains, in the dark desert cold, only to lie still, full of running thoughts, driven to the complete and utter paranoid acceptance of my own death by way of cougar maul, and wait until I tire. But I suppose this is only a trade. For now I am cursed by a darker, icier morning. 7 AM. That’s when work begins, according to my boss, the United States federal government, Department of the Interior, National Park Service. 7AM. I begin what mister and misses taxpayer(along with Chinese investment) pay me to do.


Eureka Valley. Only one mountain range separates it from Death Valley, but at even at an equivalent 2800 feet on the other side it tends to be much warmer. There, I might shed layers before crawling into my bag, yet in Eureka Valley, layers are added in order to fend off the growing coldness. I sit and wonder, shivering, picturing moving air masses of various temperatures, building pressure creating winds, all the physical dynamics that cause me to freeze my ass off in one place, yet be quite content in another of identical elevation, only 20 miles away. I fail.


I give up these thoughts in the same manner I often give up thinking in geological time. The entire world that surrounds me, Death Valley, lies ever incomprehensible. It is a cryptic story told in rocks, with fissures, faults, and cracks, rising up against each other, then with each other, through bouts of war and periods of peace, eons of drought and eras of flooding lakes, forming and fracturing together the twisted and dramatic topography that now exists. It’s an ongoing dance, yet all is perceived, falsely, as static, the movements too slow to observe in this snapshot I call my lifetime.


I have learned to stop trying to fathom how such and such canyon was carved from repeated floods in seemingly complete aridity, or how such and such valley sunk further or less than its neighbors, and how the colors on one side of a mountain range can be so dull, why the other so utterly brilliant. I have given up because I have realized that my life is too short, that my brain is too small. My mind was not built for such things, evolved only for its brief survival, left only to wallow in this tease of infinity that it is forced to swallow just by taking a walk anywhere in this strange and distant land that I inhabit. Nonetheless, I am thankful. Here, unlike most places, my neurons continue to create new paths and I am repeatedly awed by each strange new day.


Today I force myself vertical earlier than usual. It is vaguely warm as a few beams of sun bend over the Last Chance Range and touch my world. But I know I will surely work late, and feel no guilt, worthy of much more just for the suffering I endure until the water boils on my Whisperlite. The water not poured into my tin cup over instant coffee, powdered milk, and evaporated cane sugar, I dump over instant oats, let it sit until the coffee has aroused some appetite, by way of releasing yesterdays digestion, burying it in a gravelly wash…


It’s been a few weeks since I smoked a cigarette, otherwise I would have rolled and inhaled two by now, at this point pouring over my paperwork and maps, plugging points into my GPS unit, plotting out my day. Mornings are always best. Not yet beaten down by the tediousness of my daily tasks or by the heat of the day, I am refreshed, and the world has an innate freshness. I have driven around to the East side of the Eureka Dunes. It’s an entirely new angle on this, now, after three weeks of coming here, familiar world. It is disturbing how one can grow used to things. Even the absurd placement and striking contours of a giant mountain range of sand such as the Eureka Dunes can become commonplace. But on this morning, watching the sun stretch its light over this foreign side of the dunes takes me back to the wonder and awe which swept over me when I first ever rounded that bend and the golden mass of dunes came into view.


I am on a different mission this morning. Unlike my typical wanderings, documenting invasives and collecting ecological data on plant communities, I am now faced with the task of counting. Nothing more. Walking back and forth across 100m x100m squares on steep slopes of sand, all day long.


Done with my paperwork, I take off onto the deepening sand toward my first GPS coordinate, one corner of a plot. The coolness of the morning is gone. Its 8 AM and I sweat on level ground. Not a good sign…
There are three plant species that grow nowhere else in the world but on this island of sand. Two are federally endangered, on the verge of extinction, populations threatened by human recreation on this delicate habitat. The Eureka Valley Evening Primrose, Oenothera californica ssp. eurekensis, is often elusive, sometimes unseen or underrepresented in dry years. Its seeds can lie dormant for many years. Even its green velvet rosettes will hide beneath the sand for most of the year. In spring it branches and bolts, pink tinged buds once drooping, explode into large, billowy and delicate white corollas, with bright dusty yellow anthers and an enormous trident-like stigma hanging loosely outwards. Eureka Dune Grass, Swallenia alexandrae, is much more hardy and tough. It grows on even the steepest and highes slopes of the dunes. For most of the year it is a bundle of brown, spinal cord looking, meter-tall stalks buried in the sand, but the tips and new shoots grow vivid green and flower by late spring. Shining Milk Vetch, Astragalus lentiginosus var. micans, is the dominant member of the pea family on the dunes. Its silver-fuzzed, pinnate leaves can be seen on the perimeter of the dunes, shining in the desert sun. Small, purple, two-lipped flowers appear briefly in April then wither quickly in the heat of May.


Though vehicles are no longer allowed on the dunes and sand-boarding is prohibited, the populations remain far lower than they were in the 70s. Fish and Wildlife claims that they have recovered and need to be delisted, but their data was taken on a very short visit with minimal observation and little comparison to old data. My boss and others have worked hard to paint an accurate picture of how these populations are doing and how they compare to the recent past, including old and new data on transects, entire population mapping, and repeated photography.


This is where I come in. I am performing a repeatable census count, created from an extensive mapping study done a few years ago. This is the second time this experiment has been performed and will provide the first data used to determine statistically significant growths or declines.


Practical and worthwhile, so it seems, but a daunting task nonetheless. In the end I will have walked around 90 of these giant squares, not including overlap, counting vegetative, reproductive, and senescent individuals, as well as seedlings. Some plots take me a half hour; others take up to four. I have counted over 1000 seedlings in some plots.


Welcome to my office. This is what I say in my mind sometimes while I do my paperwork, sitting on a rock or directly on the sand, thinking of the majority of people who don’t have the chance to wake up and work in such a place, knowing they are being paid for it. No matter how tedious the task or how tired my mind and body are by the end of the day, I don’t forget that I am in a beautiful place, being beaten down by a truly powerful environment, something far greater than myself, something greater than humankind and all its war-thirsty empires combined. It’s this and the value of my data that keep me going.



I trudge upwards to find my first point at the edge of a giant sand bowl, and thus I begin. Milk Vetch. I walk the entire perimeter, 5 meters off the edge, staring at both the ground and my GPS. I then follow my footprints as I go back and forth, again and again, hopefully perpendicular to the slope if possible. Hiking on sand is tiring business. Five steps forward. Four back.


Two hours later, I finish on the top of a ridge. Looking down over my work, my footsteps have created an odd pattern of lines. Giant sentences scrawled on the sand for the aliens to decipher. Really though, what would they think, anyways. My work from this vantage, seems like that of a madman. My data form looks no better. A schizophrenic with a head full of numbers. What species busies itself with such a task? And why? On some level this strange business seems reasonable, but still, I am often self consciously baffled. This does not stop me. I remark on the straightness of my paths and the equality of distance between the lines. I move on and walk another plot. Over and over.


All day the thoughts. All day the numbers in my head. All day the violent wind. All day the sandstorms and all day the sun. All day long I sweat and I thirst. The sun crushes me. People typically refer to the sun as rising to its apex at high noon, but I feel it’s getting lower. Slowly sinking until it hangs just above my head, the pressure of it attempting to paralyze me before I burst into flames beneath it. Its all penetrating radiation reflects also off the sheer surface of sand, like sheet metal. When I let myself stop now and again, I cannot help but look around for respite. This is when I know my perception has truly changed… I look at Creoste bush and think… shade. Pathetic, thin shade. And not even for another few hours. I take large sip of hot water and look forward to it.


The sand is like a sea. I imagine myself naked, swimming through it. Joyous and moist, freezing in its icy envelopment. But I wake to violent gusts, heavy with blinding, stinging sand. I am still walking. Still hot. I continue counting. I curse as wind rips my data form from under the rubberband around my clipboard. It flaps and I struggle to make it stop so I can scrawl these numbers down before they fade from the jumble in my mind. Dashes on my sweat smudged data form. I crouch and hide my head. Patiently wait for pause. Once the sting of sand becomes bearable, I stand up and carry on until the next blast cripples me.


I attempt to make friends with the wind. I try to accept its presence. Humans can get used to things, but wind is not one of them. Wind is not constant enough. Never the same. Equally bothersome at each new second in an entirely new manner. Though the wind is slightly cooling, I know it isn’t doing me any good, only speeding up the rate of evaporation off my skin. It’s a good 2 miles back to camp and I’m trying to finish this portion of the dunes. I’m certain my water will be empty.


As the sun sets, calmness drifts over the dunes. The wind dies down. There is a sudden and intense stillness. Apparently, I have been lost in my mind for hours now. I head back and attempt to stop working, but my brain continues to rage onward, counting and cataloging without my consent or will. I automatically and subconsciously scan my environment. I liken this behavior to an evolutionary adaptation for foraging. Once indistinguishable plant forms set off alarms in the farthest corner of my vision and I am forced to take notice. Despite this “gift,” it is getting late and I have failed to complete all the plots in this area. I will have to hike back tomorrow.


The sunset on the horizon is nothing spectacular, but bending light, filtered through a few wispy clouds over the Inyo Mountains creates a ghostly glow over the valley. The sand seems to emit its own light, as do the primrose. Their nodding buds perk up in the dusk. Halfway back to camp, they are fully open, their milky bloom, the brightest objects around. The hummingbird moths swoop and hover around me, fluttering madly for the day’s last sips of nectar in the growing darkness.


I cross many of my tracks in the sand, confounding my message to the aliens. It doesn’t matter though. I have nothing to say to them, nothing they would understand at least.


Dinner is ramen noodles and sardines. Down to the dregs of my food supply on my last night out. The food is gone before it has a chance to cool. Exhaustion floods over me. As I lie in my sleeping bag, listening to the familiar whistle of the wind, trying to ignore the red flash coming from the dashboard, I close my eyes and I see all three of the plants, bright as they were at noon, hidden in the coiled herbage and on the stony edges of my mind, both dead and alive.


Utter darkness takes over for only a spell before the moon illuminates the desert. Blue light. I sleep like extinction itself and dream of the sea. I travel beneath an endless ocean on a planet void of land, utterly submerged until morning.











For a slide show of higher quality photos click here

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