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Located in Death Valley, California, Badwater is the lowest point in North America; Badwater is 282 feet below sea level; while much of Death Valley is scalding hot, dry, and covered in salt, Badwater has a small, ancient spring; in the pool at Badwater lives the Death Valley pupfish, also known as Cyprinodon salinus; the Death Valley pupfish is a remnant of the last Ice Age, and the only species of its kind left on Earth; the hottest temperature ever recorded in North America is 134 degrees Fahrenheit—on July 10th, 1913, in Death Valley; I was in Death Valley for two days this past February; my parents flew to Las Vegas, then planned to visit Death Valley; a surprising amount of Fall and Winter rain in California resulted in the greatest floral growth in Death Valley in almost a century; my parents are the sort to fly across America to look at flowers growing in the desert; I am their youngest child; even though I was not initially invited, I decided to join my parents; I drove alone five hours northeast from Los Angeles; I left too late in the day, and by the time I turned right from US-395 North to CA-190 East, it was around nine o’clock at night; CA-190 takes you over 70 miles into Death Valley, and at night, it is dark, barren, and if you are alone, spooky; there is nothing; I was listening to a podcast of Thom Yorke on NPR, but my iPod finally died while on CA-190; with no human voices to keep me company, I felt incredibly lonely; somehow, my cell phone still got reception; I called my friend Elliot in Brooklyn, and when I asked what he was doing, he said he was watching the lunar eclipse from his rooftop; I told him I did not see a lunar eclipse, but when I looked up and to my right, there it was: a full moon, the color of blood; I got off the phone, and spent the rest of the trip following the maroon moon; the last time I saw a lunar eclipse was in October of 2004, and I was on the Upper West Side of Manhattan; I was meeting a friend at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas to see a late screening of the Alexander Payne film, “Sideways”; when I emerged from the Columbus Circle subway at 59th street, there were hundreds of people standing still on the sidewalk, staring at the night sky; I thought Manhattan was under attack again, but then I realized these people were collectively craning their necks to see the lunar eclipse; it seemed like mass hypnosis, a gaggle of Manhattan Moonies; when I made my way deep into the heart of Death Valley, I thought I had come upon a desert sea; the light from the moon reflected off the desert floor, glimmering, like a body of water full of bioluminescent plankton; I stopped my car in the middle of the highway, turned to the side, and flashed on my high-beams; there were no cars, no lights, nothing—so I got out of my car and walked off the highway; the ground beneath my feet crunched like snow; there was no water: this was an ocean of salt; I checked into our hotel—the Furnace Creek Inn—and met my parents; the next day, we picked armfuls of Desert Gold (a vibrant yellow flower) and explored Zabriskie Point—which was overrun with fannypack-wearing German tourists—as well as Badwater; I saw a school of tiny pupfish, and fantasized about reaching into the spring, grabbing one, and swallowing the salty desert sardine whole; I restrained myself; my parents and I walked a couple hundred yards past the spring, into the center of a salt field, and my father had me pose for photographs; we argued about the photos, because he wanted mountains behind me, but this position required me to stare directly into the sun; I gave in; this was not an uncommon fight for us; a month later, the half-dozen photos that my father took of me arrived in the mail; in the photographs, I am wearing a yellow shirt, blue hat—and glaring; I look like I want to fistfight; it is a desert mugshot; this is not how I want to think of myself, or how I want my parents to think of me; is this really how I look?; this is also not how I want to remember Death Valley; examining these photos of myself, I can not help but think of a poem a friend recently sent me (“Archaic Torso of Apollo,” by Rainer Maria Rilke); in the final stanza of Rilke’s poem about a headless statue, he writes: “…would not, from all borders of itself, / burst like a star: for here there is no place/ that does not see you. You must change your life.”

~ by tinyfacts on July 22, 2008.

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Tags: 59th street, Alexander Payne, Archaic Torso of Apollo, Badwater, Brooklyn, CA-190, California, Columbus Circle, Cyprinodon salinus, Death Valley, Death Valley pupfish, Desert Gold, Furnace Creek Inn, German, Ice Age, Las Vegas, Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, Los Angeles, lunar eclipse, Manhattan, Moonies, North America, NPR, pupfish, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke, Sideways, Thom York, Upper West Side, US-395, Zabriskie Point