Terrain
I love the desert, I love the mountains, you can keep the beach.
Morning in Death Valley and it’s about 54 deg C. I’m happiest with the windows open and the air con off.
Hard winds rush over the dead river beds, dust devils are whipping up sand and spiralling across the super-heated open space. It’s possibly my favourite place on earth.
Permission to rock - granted.
The history of a more wet and fertile time is all around us but for now, bone dry and restless, this place is not an area for survival but for a few hardy critters. There’s nothing much here but heat and cracked ground. Nothing much to hear but the wind whipping around my ears. It’s hard to take for long, but it’s incredible while I can.
We head up to slightly cooler air in the hills around the valley. At midday we stop to look back at the tiny winding road we took, so small from this distance. Whilst marvelling at the perspective we get a surprise visit from the US Air force. A pair of fighter jets is buzzing the canyon we are standing next to. They are giant and loud, elegant precision fliers and frightening killing machines all rolled into one. They move so fast, beating the speed of sound through the heat and withing seconds appear to play across the mountains in the distance.
In a day of contrasts we cover the miles to Yosemite National Park. By this time and place the air is much cooler. The tall trees create dim corridors.
As the sun sets a Morse code of light flashes through the odd gaps in the trees leaving marks in my vision.
It’s an altogether different natural beauty. Between the two, dead heated spaces and cool wooded oasis, America does provide some of the most breath taking places to see, without seeing anything man made.
JK – Sandblasted
