Desert Roaming Sister

today is my sister adrienne's birthday. you all probably know how ade loves and craves the desert lands, so in honor of her birthday we just took a little trip for few days down south on 395 on the east side of the sierras to the desert.

in the desert it is like someone left the light on too long. so bright your eyes hurt, there is a roaring beneath the surface and in the sky. in Death Valley the surface of the earth can reach 200 degrees fahrenheit. sometimes fighter jets scream by down out of nowhere and dive straight into the canyons and you are aware of inauspicious mechanical powers that still have no match for these eerie desolate lands.

everything seems more rickety, more rustic, more dusty. there is a shimmering pallor over life and death alike, dry creekbed and bone, sunflower, dune, tavern. 

like nothing is quite real...or is too real.

when i say desolate i surely do not mean abandoned. i mean forsaken and sometimes forgotten by humans. life is abundant in the desert. the sun shines, the wind blows, seeds scatter, birds and animals learn to eat and sleep and fly and crawl protectively.

 

ghost town, lonely fortress of strange guards and rusty relics.

 

weird guardians of a borderworld between living and dead, ghost and flesh, wood and bone....

later...tiny frogs hide out in a decaying log of a desert oasis.

we took a dip in a cold and mossy pool, the only year round waterfall in death valley.

the hike to darwin falls is half dust and beating sun, then half jungle and shadowy depths right in the middle of death valley: the hottest, lowest, driest place in north america. here suddenly, a riparian zone where flora and fauna luxuriate along riverbanks in a tangle of growth and rebirth. death seeping back into the earth, we saw a dead bird, a dead bat, and a giant dead grasshopper all falling into mud.

 

the world is a magical place my friends. i quote sera cahoone, recommended by milla, and listened to abundantly on this trip (she might be from the pnw, but the songs sure sound like desert to me):

"you might as well just sing."

  and happiest birthday to the one and only most unique and wild-hearted, undaunted and free and strong-minded and lively, dust and wind and sun-loving sister of my heart and soul.

 to a thousand more adventures!