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| Shade, Mesquite Dunes, Death Valley National Park, Steve Brown 2026 |
1. 11:52 a.m.
I'm at Mesquite Dunes tucked under a small, bush-like tree on a day that is only supposed to get to 82 degrees. I'm no stranger to heat. I've walked around Vegas after midnight when it's been 105, and I've experienced 117 before. I even lived on the fifth floor of an old apartment building in El Paso that only had one small window AC during a summer that had ninety days straight of temperatures over 100. But there is something uniquely oppressive about Death Valley heat. I think it must have to do with the density of the air that comes with its incredibly low elevation.
Even 82 here feels hot, but I like sitting under this bush, looking across the expanse of near-white dunes. There aren't a lot of people about this late in the day, but occasionally someone walks by, and I see only their legs until they walk farther off towards the really big dunes in the distance. People stand out against the sand. Especially at sunset. They become silhouetted abstractions. They are like trees, and their forms take on meaning connected to the landscape, like pines around a lake in the evening. When we look at people in everyday life, we usually see faces, clothes, hair, hands--details, rather than entire forms. Our eyes focus on parts. The whiteness of Death Valley makes the eye view a person from a distance the same way one views a rock, a tree, a bush. Everything here is an abstraction. Even the heat. It's too real to actually be tangible. The same with the silence. I've never had an out-of-body experience, but being here probably hints towards one. You feel both less and more connected to everything around you than you normally do. The place forces you into moments of Zen.
2. 1:43
Camp. There's a little bit of shade. I didn't think there'd be any until much later in the day. I'm glad I was wrong. It comes from a couple of scraggly mesquite trees. The campground is in a wash. It flooded with much of the rest of the park in August of 2023 when remnants of Hurricane Hilary pounded the desert. In November of the same year, my brother and I arrived the night before they finally reopened the west entrance. When they did, we were able to see Father Crowly Vista Point beyond the Panamint Valley.
As deep as the silence is on the east side of the park, it is even more profound on the west side for most the tourists don't venture beyond Stove Pipe Wells. I probably won't either this time. However, that silence still sits within me.
Going west from Stove Pipe Wells, you climb what seems like forever up a chunky black basalt fan until you reach Towne Pass, which although only 4,056 high, is still significant considering you just climbed from below sea level, and the amazing thing is, you haven't really gone up a mountain yet. Instead, you've climbed 4,000 feet up a fan. It's mind boggling. We usually stop at Emigrant Campground for a look back down into the valley, which is only half-way up that climb, and even that provides a breath-taking view.
The first sight of Panamint Valley is astonishing. Although not near as deep as Death Valley, with an elevation of 1,400 to 1,800 feet above sea level, it still appears to be a very long way down. And its color is amazing. Surrounded by black basalt craggy mountains, it is a soft yellow due to the dry lakebed that is covered in low, yellow grasses. It feels like you're dropping into another world as you wind your way down into it, which is mind-blowing, because you just came from Death Valley, and you'd think after that everything else would appear very dull and ordinary. Both Death Valley and Panamint Valley are so incredibly beautiful in their own ways. But for a sense of isolation, Panamint Valley, has got the upper hand. Even though it has a small town on the west side of the flat, it is quite possible your own arms, legs, and feet will be the only human you see until you reach Panamint Springs. And unless you stop for gas or a bite to eat, you might not see a human there either. The silence is great, oh so great.
Here at camp, it's pretty quiet too. The campground has all but emptied out. Maybe ten percent of the sites are occupied. And it's hot, but I sort of like hot, smack-a-fly-dead days. Because of air conditioning, we no longer experience heat like we used to. As a kid, our home didn't have AC, and I sometimes miss listless lethargy of summer without it. I'm enjoying that today as well, although I'm sure I'd soon want AC back if I no longer had access to it. I know that. Yet, we keep getting better and better at isolating ourselves from real moments--the sights, sounds, temperatures and textures of the natural world. Heat is an amazing thing. So is cold. It's best if they don't kill you, but to never experience them unconditioned by technology--that can't be good either.
Moments. Hot ones. Cold ones. Wet ones. Dry ones. That may soon be all we have left. The world is changing so incredibly fast. AI can do better what we once considered very uniquely human talents, like writing this paragraph. The day may soon be here when every human skill can be done by a machine. And even if that doesn't happen, average, normal moments are harder and harder to find. The climate is out of control. Fires, floods, tornadoes. Weather extremes are amazing. Death Valley heat is special because it belongs to Death Valley. It's not so grand when similar heat starts showing up in Minnesota. North Dakota cold is amazing indeed. It's not so grand when it starts showing up in Texas.
We need these moments. We need now to become playfully, deadly serious, or we won't have any nows left to remember. If we're going to have AI, we need to focus it on the things that really matter, and nothing matters more than the climate. We are creating a world we no longer can live in.
We need moments just like this one to sit in the silence and hear and respect life breathing all around us. For without that collective breath, there is no us. No amount of denial will change that. We are one.
