Salt circles

At Death Valleys low, salty base lies the Badwater basin. Like the pans we travelled through in Botswana, they are alive and fluctuating, with water that waxes and wanes, in an otherwise dry place. In Badwater, the high salinity of the earth below leaves behind salt crystal formations when rising spring waters dry up. Salt crystals crunch beneath bare feet and form lunar-like circles across the surface of the pan. Water in a dry place always leaves a shadow of itself when gone, more often than not it is a circle.

A circle in a map

We are on the road again, creating what I realize is another circle on a map. This time the circle leads from our front door, around the Grand Canyon and back home again.

 We added some miles to our journey by taking a detour through Death Valley, a low, vast and very hot place. An eleven hour drive took us from Marin County, to Furnace Creek, at 242 feet below sea level, it is an ocean of dry. We arrived at 6pm, to temperatures of 116 F/ 46C and abandoned plans to watch the full moon rise from a ridge top. We opted instead to watch it rise from the mineral water fed pool on our hotel grounds. A huge golden moon rose, chasing the setting sun over a vast, dry place - while we floated on our backs in a pool.

The following morning we filled our water bottles and headed out to explore a place that supports only the hardiest of life - and in that lies it's beauty.

The highlight of our time was as always, the line on a map that was a little thinner and more broken up than the other roads. It took us on a 28 mile one-way road, over winding passes and through narrow canyons. Along the way, we passed through a ghost town, this town having existed for only a year as a living one. It's entire life was based on wildly exaggerated claims of riches to be found and 300 prospectors, who within a year of its creation, had already abandoned it. Old mine shafts and remnants of buildings were all that was left of dreams of striking it rich in this harshest of places.

As with many ancient and undisturbed places, we found Petroglyphs carved thousands of years ago, telling of ancient lives in this relatively unchanged place. (Pink filter in the photo was accidental, but somehow works!) We had seen big horned sheep clambering up a sheer rock face 20 minutes before finding ancient drawings of its ancestors, made by someone who stood right where we were and etched its likeness on to a rock. From there our drive took us through Titus Canyon, a winding water-carved route through the mountains. 

Again, time and space seem to bend, with the ancient and the present somehow merging. The best part was, that we had this magnificent place all to ourselves.