The Beauty of Relics.

High Noon in the Desert, Photo by blogger Jamm
Click to enlarge

This photo essay of photographer, Marshall Sokoloff, in The Morning News, brought back the striking nature of the desert for me. I lived in the desert for over two years in a small town in California named Desert Hot Springs, about 20 miles and a lifetime away from Palm Springs. Sokoloff's photographs entitled Dreamland precede a wonderful interview which is below the photos when you scroll down the page. The photos and the interview bring back the grit and feel of the desert.

The abandoned nature of the desert repelled me when I first arrived to live there. It was high noon and everything was flat and ugly. Heat rippled the roads and horizon. I awoke early the next morning, though, and walked out into the desert that surrounded the place I was to live. What had been flat and unattractive at noon the day before, was now alive and dazzling in the morning light.

The longer I lived in the desert the more moved I was by beauty and feel of it. The sparse, dry environment was stripped of all but the essentials. There was little visual distraction. You could really see things. Because of that, everything was heightened and quietly dramatic. It is no wonder that so many mystics emerged from long periods in the desert, renewed and clear. I understand that now. The desert represents not so much abandonment, as it does the the folly of human effort and striving.

Sokoloff's photos are of a particular place, the Salton Sea. I never got that far south. But, I have to say, the desert is the desert. Go anywhere in it and you will find these gems like Sokoloff found, collapsing, turning to dust, blowing away. This disintegration of life happens more rapidly in the desert because of the heat and wind. The desert quickly teaches the truth, as you are watching.

Leadfield, Death Valley, California

It is often hard to discern what is before you in the desert. There is so much light that the pupils constrict and your vision becomes unreliable. I luxuriated in the southern California desert for over two years and became a devotee. One of my most consistent yearnings each springtime is to return to Death Valley for a visit and a room at the Furnace Creek Inn.

The photo above was taken in April, 2001 on my first trip to Death Valley. The area pictured is Tyson's Pass, on the northeast side of the Valley. It is high desert, dry, but green. Off in the distance and around that mountain, the elevation drops drastically to the desert floor. When you reach the basin of Death Valley you are below sea level in a serious way. I put this picture up because it is one of the most hospitable areas of the Valley. People rarely see its green and "kinder" side. Yet, even here, survival was impossible.

Tyson's pass is drop dead beautiful. The problem with these big, beautiful spaces in our country is that in order to get a shot of them you need a six-trillion dollar lens. This I do not have. So the meager shot above must suffice. And it does. It yanks me right into a deep yearning for the place and the unending narrative of the desert.

The tale of Leadfield reveals a common desert failure; the inability to grasp the excruciating heat and terrible dust of the desert environs. Also, wrapped up in this Leadfield story is the cautionary narrative about trusting your future to winning the Lottery. One who came believing in stories of fortune was, well...toast. Blind to the desert's merciless environment, the adventurer is either found crawling out on his hands and knees or dead. The dead then become part of the blowing dust of the immense, lonely place.

Death Valley provides a glimpse of an astounding natural world. There is no other place like it. You may catch the sites and feel of the desert in other parts of the USA and other countries. You can see it in the Mojave, Gobi, Sahara. But the sheer freaky, beautiful variety of the landscape of Death Valley is like no other. Knowing that I could return to the Furnace Creek Inn at high, frigging, noon and jump in the pool, made it possible to explore the gorgeous place. To me it is similar to the surprise and grandeur of the Grand Canyon (The vertical drop from Telescope Peak, highest mountain in the Valley, to the Badwater Basin is twice the depth of the Grand Canyon). But Death Valley is different from the truly, grand, Grand Canyon. It has a startling variety of landscape and it is formidable and inhospitably treacherous. These qualities add a nice edge to a trip.