Ash Meadows

When HH and I got close to Death Valley on our way from southern Arizona, the GPS kept telling us to turn in at the road leading to Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, miles away from the Valley. It was one of those GPS things that makes no sense, so rather than emulating the Japanese tourists who blindly followed their GPS's directions straight into the ocean, we followed the directions that were painted on brown steel and pounded into the earth. What we didn't find out until later was the GPS was actually correct. Boy, were we sorry for saying bad things about the Garmin.

A researcher in the archives who was interested in pupfish told me about this place. We pass it every time we go from the park to Pahrump (I'm not making that up), Nevada, but it looked like a whole lotta nothin' out there, and kept passing it by. The researcher said it's a wonderful place, so off we went this weekend. He was absolutely right.

The Visitor Center is brand new, open only a month and with exhibits still under construction. No photos of it, but one of the signs outside it spoke about the native people of the area. Ash Meadows is the ancestral land of the Nuwuvi (Southern Paiute) and Newe (Western Shohone) who consider the spiral formations to represent the rattlesnake who commands respect and watches over the land. The formation below was cited as a representation of the snake.

Behind the visitor center is a one-mile-long boardwalk that leads to Crystal Reservoir and Lower Crystal Marsh, where a small population of Ash Meadows Amargosa pupfish lives. Pupfish were named for behavior that appeared as playful as puppies. The behavior, attributed to the males, is related to breeding. Need I say more?

One species can live in as little as one inch of water. Other species tolerate salinity three times greater than the ocean, and another has adapted to water temperature as warm as 110° F. Several species of pupfish are on the Endangered Species list.

In the 1980s a developer saw $$$ in the desert where Ash Meadows now is, and made plans to build 20,000 homes, shopping malls, and other accoutrements of civilization that would have eliminated the habitat of every living creature there, including at least 24 species of plants and animals that live nowhere else on earth. In fact, Ash Meadows has the highest concentration of indigenous life found only in one location than any other local area in the United States and the second greatest in all of North America. Of course there was huge controversy, complete with competing bumper stickers of Kill the Pupfish! and Save the Pupfish! 

In 1983 The Nature Conservancy purchased the 13,000 plus acres, saving 12 major spring systems whose 10,000–year-old “fossil waters” feed numerous pools and riparian systems. Most of the water comes from rain and snowmelt from the Spring Mountains of southern Nevada, taking thousands of years to trickle down the cracks and seep its way into the aquifer. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, custodians of this now-23,000 acre property, is in constant activity to remove exotic plants and animals that divert resources from native species, and to repair the damage that was done by decades of farming. It took the Supreme Court to halt pumping of the aquifers that threatened the tiny habitat of the pupfish.

The turquoise color, even more vibrant in person, is due to being filtered through limestone.

In the only photo of the 2-inch pupfish that remotely turned out, two green females are camouflaged by rippling water. Males are bright, electric blue. I saw many but none stayed still long enough to photograph.

 In stark contrast to the apparent desolation of the Mojave Desert...

is the appearance of oases, described as being like "charms on a bracelet" that appear when the underground Amargosa River breaks the surface. They're breathtaking and unexpected.

We made our way to Devil's Hole, the only place the Devil's Hole pupfish live, and the place the GPS tried to send us on our way to the Valley - because Devil's Hole is actually Death Valley property, wholly surrounded by Ash Meadows NWR.

The iridescent blue inch-long fish's only natural habitat is in the 93 degree waters of Devil's Hole. According to a Fish and Wildlife website, a count of the fish in April 2013 estimated 35 Devils Hole pupfish remained in their natural habitat.  A September count estimated 65 fish. When population counts began in 1972, pupfish numbered around 550 individuals.

Devils Hole pupfish is one of the world’s rarest fishes, spending most of its life in the top 80 feet of the 93° waters of a cavern in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Its habitat is one of the smallest natural ranges known for any vertebrate. The surface water is only about 3x5 feet, but is at least 500 feet deep.

I thought I'd be able to see the fish but this is what greets the visitor.

The cage continues to a platform that is also entirely enclosed, and all that's visible is the small surface area of the water at the mouth of the cave. There isn't anything to see. The fish and their habitat are being protected and that's a good thing.

Finally, I give you this lovely sight, turquoise water vivid against the sober browns and gray-greens of the desert; imagine the 49ers, not believing their eyes. It was no less welcome a sight to me.

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Thought of the day:

Water, water, water....There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount, a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be. - Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness

Fall Canyon

When we arrived in mid-December we were met by friends and fellow volunteers from Petrified Forest. They'd been here about six weeks by then, and they told me my next-trailer neighbor was a hiker and was looking forward to having someone to hike with. Deb was gone, home to Baltimore for Christmas, and I didn't meet her for a few weeks. When she returned she asked if I'd like to go to Fall Canyon with her, and one pretty day we set out. It was the first canyon I explored.

Let me just say this: the woman is a hiking fiend. Thank goodness she's a birder because once she gets moving the sight or sound of a bird is about all that will slow her down. This summer she's heading to the Alps. I pity the friend who's going with her because I can't imagine keeping up with her at altitude; sea level is hard enough.

After a tiring distance across th inevitable uphill - always uphill - alluvial fan, we finally arrived at the canyon's first narrows.

There is the evil woman who tortures me. I like her.

Have you ever seen rock that bends into distinct curves? It's such a graceful sight that belies the name given it: tortured rock.

Another narrows. They're interesting not only for their unique features but for the mystery of what lies around the corner. Some walls are rough and uneven, some are polished smooth and almost glossy. A couple of weekends ago Deb and another friend and I camped for a night at Marble Canyon, where we found narrows walls as coarse as a grater, and a couple of feet lower on the same wall, it was worn smooth by flood waters surging through over the decades. Interesting stuff. 

Yet another narrows. Loose, deep gravel makes this a moderately strenuous hike but also encourages a slower pace.  If you hurry through, what's the point of being there? Even Deb slows for this.

Some say this is one of the more beautiful canyons in Death Valley. The changing colors and textures make each one unique, that's for sure. I haven't been to more than a few but I can easily see why this one would make such a list.

Our hike ended at this dry fall of 18 feet, and no scalable route over it without climbing gear. Before we got here I bought a copy of Hiking Death Valley by Michel Diconnet and later found out it's considered the bible of exploring the Valley. The author describes the routes, of course, but also tells of the geology, history, flora, and fauna that might be encountered. He says there's a route around the fall but we didn't look for it, and this was our turnaround point. Because the canyon is easy to get to I hope I can hike it again and find my way to its upper reaches.

The total route was about seven miles and I felt every one of them, which leads me to ask, Why don't I have a jacuzzi in the house? Somebody needs to remedy that.

The walls of Fall Canyon's narrows are hundreds of feet high in places, which makes it different from others that don't have the dramatic enclosed feeling.

I am awaiting wildflowers with bated breath. We've had rain several times, a good amount last week, and I have my fingers crossed for an abundant crop. There are a dozen or so wildflowers known as Class I Endemics; they grow only within the confines of the park. More than two dozen are Class II; the majority of their range is within the park. This, of course, is some of last year's crop, but this year's should start blooming at the lower elevations on the darned alluvial fans within the next few weeks, and out I will go again. I can't get enough of this paradise.

For a very different view of Death Valley, read Death Valley in '49 by William Manley. I found it as a free download on Amazon.

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Thought of the day:

In the American Southwest, I began a lifelong love affair with a pile of rock. - Edward Abbey

Dante's View

Dante's View is named for the author of the Divine Comedy, Dante Alighieri, who described 9 circles of the Inferno, 7 terraces of Mount Purgatory, and 9 celestial bodies of Paradiso.

In April 1926, some businessmen of the Pacific Coast Borax Company, informed of the touristic attractiveness of Death Valley, were trying to pick the best view of Death Valley. They had nearly chosen Chloride Cliff in the Funeral Mountains north of here when they learned of this place in the Black Mountains. Upon seeing it the group was immediately persuaded and promptly called this point Dante's View.

Exactly which vision of the afterlife was in the minds of the namers of Dante's View is unknown. I can understand it being any of the three: the Valley's Inferno in mid-summer; Purgatory if one comes on foot up the long, winding road with a 15° grade, or Paradiso, for the sublime view.

See what I mean? This has to be the best view of the Valley from anywhere in the park. It's not what I expected a place called Death Valley to look like.

A different view of the salt flats, this elevation shows the patterns of wet and dry.

I looked at this view and looked again. What is that line? Is there a pipeline on the Valley floor? No. Can't be. Then I saw a speck moving along it and realized it's the Badwater Road, the one my boss drove along when he took us to the lowest point in North America.

To the south lie the Owlshead Mountains. The path to the brink is up hill and down dale, looking much steeper than it actually is.

 

An alluvial fan looks so very different from up top.

This is the road we returned on from the date ranch. I'd never have guessed how different it would be from a mile in the air. I also would never have guessed that my vocabulary would prove to be so inadequate, that I just would not have the words to do justice to these views.

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Thought of the day:

At this high moment, ability failed my capacity to describe. - Dante Alighieri

Not that kind of a date ranch

A few weeks ago HH and I drove a couple of hours to visit a date ranch in Tecopa, California. When I told a friend we had gone, and explained what it was (we are close to Nevada, after all) she seemed just a little disappointed that our destination was so tame. Sigh. The trials of being an adventurer, always having to live up to my wild reputation.

The way into the ranch regressed from a highway to a paved secondary road, to a gravel road, to a dirt track barely one and a half lanes wide, and wound itself down into a canyon with a forty-foot sight line until the next hairpin turn. We wondered what we were getting ourselves into.

Then this view opened in front of us: an oasis in the desert.

This was a brand new experience for me. There are acres of date palms of a couple dozen varieties. The small gift shop has tasting bins of each kind they have for sale and no one was keeping track of how many samples I tried. 

They also sell date shakes. As cold as it was that day, there was no way we were leaving without slurping one down.  A gigantic date cookie somehow made it into our sack; I'm not the one who added it to the pile of goodies we accumulated on the checkout counter.

As the dates ripen on the trees, cloth bags are tied over each cluster to keep the birds off. Imagine this on a moonlit night.

Each variety has a sign like this one. I liked having the information. Did you know that all date palms are the same genus and species, Phoenix Dactyliferia? Did you know that dates produced this kind of yield? Some varieties have more, some have less. Some have a short shelf life because they are very large with a high sugar content, and so ferment easily. I wonder if there's a date wine.

The ranch also grows hybrids that they've developed themselves.

We wandered the orchard, never predicting or even guessing that different colors like these existed in unripe fruit.

These are the oldest trees there, planted around 1920 with seeds from a mail order catalog. About half are males, producing only pollen - each male having enough for several dozen female trees. The females produce more than 10 different types of dates which they collectively call the China Ranch Hybrids.

Here's the last of the season for this cluster.

On our way back home through the park we stopped to watch a pair of coyotes. One trotted off among the brush but the other stayed near the road, watchful. We often hear them at night, yipping outside the house, very close.

It was a fun trip. Our return took us through the southern part of Death Valley, along Badwater Road, with more of the indescribable beauty that is the soul of this place.


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Thought of the day:

Permit me to introduce myself. My name is Coyote. Wile E. Coyote, genius.- Wile E. Coyote, To Hare is Human, 1956

A white man's neighborhood

HH and I went to Manzanar National Historic Site last weekend. The Park Service has done an outstanding job here; it would have been worth the drive even without the spectacular scenery along the way.

*With many thanks to the Park Service for all of their interpretive information

being in the public domain. In other words, I freely plagiarized.*

President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, authorizing the Secretary of War to  establish Military Areas and to remove from those areas anyone who might threaten the war effort. Everyone of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast was given just days to decide what to do with their homes, farms, businesses, and other possessions. They were allowed to take with them only what they could carry. By November 1942, 120,000 people were sent to one of ten relocation centers built in remote deserts, plains, and swamps scattered among seven states. About two-thirds of those interned at Manzanar were American citizens by birth. The remainder included many who had lived here for decades but were denied citizenship by law.

The entire site was 6,000 acres; the housing area was 500 acres surrounded by barbed wire and eight guard towers with searchlights and military police patrols. 

By September 1942 more than 10,000 Japanese Americans were housed in 504 barracks like this one. The barracks were organized into 36 blocks. Each of the blocks shared latrines and showers without dividers (privacy), a laundry room, an ironing room, an oil storage tank, and a mess hall. The barracks consisted of four 20x25 foot rooms, each inhabited by any combination (my emphasis) of eight people. Each barracks - not each room - had one hanging light bulb, an oil stove, cots, blankets, and mattresses filled with straw. I saw a photo in the museum that showed internees filling their own mattresses. There was no running water. Walls between the four rooms did not reach the ceiling. The barracks had been hastily built with green wood and blowing sand and intense heat and cold were constant companions.

This is one of the "improved" barracks that came about over time, because it has wall board. Knot holes in the floors were covered with tin can lids until linoleum was installed to keep the sand from blowing in between the floorboards.

This sign marks the original entrance.

All internees passed by the military police sentry and internal police posts at the entrance. They were built by an internee-stonemason in 1942. On the left of the road were the administration buildings. None of them remain.

The former auditorium housed a gymnasium and was used for plays and ceremonies, concerts and lectures. They had dances, talent shows, and movies. It's now the Site's interpretive center with an excellent museum.

Merritt Park was created by internees - a landscape designer, a floriculturist, and workers, in 1943. It had disappeared under several feet of sand over the years but in 2008 it was excavated. The water and plants are no longer there; the stones creating the waterways remain.

The stone is a memorial to those who passed through the gates of Manzanar.

This space was called the 3-4 Garden. It was a mess hall garden, easing the monotony of long mealtime lines. There were more gardens in Blocks 9, 12, and 22, each of which acted as a source of block identity and pride.

The 3-4 Garden was excavated in 1999, along with a mess hall root cellar. The fence, next photo down, was reconstructed.

 

The obelisk in the cemetery has memorialized not only the 150 internees who died at Manzanar, but also the more than 120,000 confined everywhere during the war. This side of the memorial reads Soul Consoling Tower. Hundreds of artifacts have been left here by those who come for the annual pilgrimage and by other visitors. Small stones are visible on the ledges at the base of the obelisk.

The reverse of the tower reads Erected by the Manzanar Japanese, August 1943.

 

150 died at Manzanar; 15 were buried here, the rest cremated. Six burials remain today.

The museum is fascinating. I learned a lot, including this horrible history:
Under pressure from the U.S., sixteen Latin American countries interned 8,500 residents of German, Italian, and Japanese descent. Over 3,000 others were deported to the U.S., where they were to be exchanged for U.S. citizens held as prisoners of war. The deportees' passports were confiscated and, upon arriving in the U.S., they were declared illegal immigrants and placed in Department of Justice camps in Texas. The majority of the deportees of Japanese ancestry were eventually sent to Japan either as part of the exchange program or as repatriates after the war.

Of the 2,264 Japanese nationals who were deported from Latin America, eighty percent were from Peru. When the war ended, Peru refused many of those remaining in the U.S. reentry and the U.S. denied their residency requests. In 1952 364 Japanese Peruvians were declared 'permanent legally admitted immigrants' and became eligible for American citizenship.

Manzanar is far away, in terms of distance, but also in terms of the even marginally heightened awareness and sensitivity we say we have today. I'd like to say it couldn't happen again, not on this scale, but I'd be a fool to say it does not still exist in more subtle, insidious ways.

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Thought of the day:


When you were a little girl, Madam.....was this the woman you dreamed of becoming? - Andrew Sean Greer, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells