IN THE DESERT, YOU CAN’T REMEMBER YOUR NAME

I absolutely love being in desert environments. The beauty of the landscape is sometimes overlooked, and I think my appreciation for it has expanded over time. Every time I visit the deserts of California or the South West United States, I marvel at how indigenous people were able to survive there for centuries. The presence of ghost towns remind one of how difficult the conditions are, but also how determined human beings can be if they find value in natural resources that may (or may not) be available.

Death Valley is a particularly incredible desert landscape with so many beautiful places to visit all within a few hundred miles of each other.

A happy side benefit of visiting deserts is the nighttime sky… usually far away from light pollution, they are excellent locations for stargazing. Here are some photos I took at night, to complement this Death Valley visit.

The desert wears… a veil of mystery. Motionless and silent it evokes in us an elusive hint of something unknown, unknowable, about to be revealed. Since the desert does not act it seems to be waiting — but waiting for what?

Edward Abbey

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Death Valley National Park

Death Valley National Park is an American national park that straddles the California–Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada. The park boundaries include Death Valley, the northern section of Panamint Valley, the southern section of Eureka Valley and most of Saline Valley. The park occupies an interface zone between the arid Great Basin and Mojave deserts, protecting the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and its diverse environment of salt-flats, sand dunes, badlands, valleys, canyons and mountains. Death Valley is the largest national park in the contiguous United States, as well as the hottest, driest and lowest of all the national parks in the United States.^[5] It contains Badwater Basin, the second-lowest point in the Western Hemisphere at 282 feet (86 m) below sea level. More than 93% of the park is a designated wilderness area.^[6] The park is home to many species of plants and animals that have adapted to this harsh desert environment including creosote bush, Joshua tree, bighorn sheep, coyote, and the Death Valley pupfish, a survivor from much wetter times. UNESCO included Death Valley as the principal feature of its Mojave and Colorado Deserts Biosphere Reserve in 1984.^[7]