Death Valley
I recently returned from a road trip in America, visiting the great national parks, which are rightly highlighted as some of the country’s greatest natural treasures.
It was an awesome experience. Americans say it as it is, so for example, the map is littered with place names, some well known, such as Rocky Mountains or Salt Lake City, others, such as Boulder, or Little Rock, Canyonlands or Muddy Waters. Death Valley is no exception. As you approach the valley, over an ever more barren mountain range and then through vast, flat, rock-strewn spaces, empty of all but the sparsest vegetation, with towering mountains in the distance, it seems as if you are descending into Hades itself – Death Valley is below sea level - the lowest place in America. Or perhaps you have landed on the moon - an idea endorsed by the last sign of civilisation off the main highway - Area 51, where the suggestion of alien presence from outer space has been causing controversy since the famous sightings of unexplained foreign objects back in the 1950’s. An alien would certainly have recognised this landscape. It must be one of the bleakest places on earth.
We had already driven up to Zion National Park, and then ventured on to Bryce. They were different. Each has its own unique majesty and character, and here there were signs of life – deer, the blue jay that seemed to turn up whenever we stopped at a beauty spot, wild turkey and bison. Zion stuns you with the sheer height of its mountain ranges, rolling out in long walls either side of the pretty valley down below, where the much reduced, once mighty Virgin River meanders along the floor. In the summer it must be beautiful. In winter it had an other-worldly atmosphere, equally haunting, the bleached tracery of the bare boughs of birch and ash as delicate as, Edward Thomas once wrote, ‘as flower of grass’.
The final remnants of some of these ancient mountains have taken on the appearance of hilltop fortresses, punctuating our every turn. Bryce, even higher up, also has the wow factor, with its famous rock formations, known as Hoodoos, that uncannily resemble chessboard figures laid out in rows for as far as the eye can see, or which morph into the serried ranks of the Chinese terracotta army with its signature warm red rock lit up in the strong light. In one place it seemed as if Queen Victoria herself had actually been carved out of a limestone column - a great statue standing alone and regally surveying the territory below!
It had snowed just before we arrived, which added another dimension to the extraordinary scenery, but our days were blessed with bright blue skies and warm sunshine whilst we were there. I purchased crampons and a stick and hiked up and down a snow-covered mountain path on the Peek-a-boo trail, the valley floor a hidden delight of winding paths, natural archways and shards of rock perching on slender columns, and the ancient bristlecone pines, some 1500 years old.
At certain times of the day, the sun performs its alchemist’s trick, sharpening the contours and bathing the rocks in the crimson light of sunrise or sunset. The mountains are set on fire, and for a few seconds, turn into solid gold. People gather to witness the spectacle on a daily basis, from all quarters of the world, silenced by the spectacle before them. It is quite simply awe-inspiring.
If ever you needed to be reminded of your place in the universe, and the antiquity of our natural world, it is here, in these vast canyons, reworked over the centuries by wind and ice erosion, worn down to their elements, but still reigning supreme. This is why people come. It feels like a pilgrimage, and no doubt in ancient times when the sun was worshipped as a god, it was.
It is a place and a time to contemplate eternity, the meaning of our existence on this planet, and our mortality, and our contract with this precious earth and its diminishing strength. It required silence in the way that stepping inside consecrated buildings still does. A sort of reverence breathed, unspoken, in the air. It was impossible not to feel the spirit of earlier times and people who had trod the same path. One image will remain permanently etched in my memory. A woman in a red ski suit far below, was navigating her way slowly across the crumpled limestone hills with a pair of sticks, the striking range of pale bare hills turned gold at the point of sunset, with its deep crevasses deepening in shadow. She looked tiny, but vivid – one individual intrepidly ploughing forward on her chosen journey, set against a vast, unforgiving landscape, transformed in that particular moment into something quite beautiful. Such are we, although reduced to pinheads by our ordinary humanity in the face of these inexplicable mysteries, yet still our own individual selves, each precious and unique, making our mark and striving forward on our own beautiful journeys.
Death Valley, March 2023
It is an impression that will remain with me to the end of my days, and that is the message I take home from Death Valley.