After the Storm –10.0 — — Possibly Near Wacoba Wash, Saline Valley, East California, USA
“I’ve got a peaceful easy feeling/And I know you won’t let me down/Because I’m already sleeping on the ground…”
IF anyone is looking for me I’m at 36 degrees, 39 minutes, 23 seconds North and 117 degrees 40 minutes, 37 seconds West. Or at least that was the last reading off my smart phone before it died.
Everything dies eventually, I guess. Being stranded out in the north end of Death Valley National Park just brings it a little closer to home. It’s a hot, thirsty, and lonely death from what I can tell so far. But it has its beauty.
It was not my intention to be stranded here. But then is it ever? An excursion to the Saline Valley Hotsprings turned into the drama of vehicle meltdown when the camper van we were traveling in (me and my old friend T.) over heated, spewed its coolant and left us stuck on a tortuous washboard road in the middle of the afternoon. We barely managed to get the van into a flattened turnout on the edge of a wash half way out toward Busted Flat. Always the resourceful travelers we broke out the lawn chairs, cracked open the cooler and made ourselves a couple of well-sized gin and tonics. I mean what else was there to do?
There is very little traffic on the Saline Valley Road. We were well into our alcoholic reverie (one drink each, it don’t take much with us lightweights) when the miracle of a blue Tacoma (older, dusty, with a camper shell on the back and a tow hitch carrier sagging with the heaviness of a battered ice chest) came rumbling south from the direction of the hot springs. Half-naked I stumbled out into the road, waved my arms, jumped up and down. There was no need for such hysterics. The driver was only traveling 15 mph at the most. A friendly negotiation ensued. I traded all of my ice, for a ride. Ten minutes later T. was loaded into the passenger seat (slightly drunk, nicely tanned) and our new friend Skylar (smiling with a newly iced drink in his hand and the butt of a hand rolled cigarette in his mouth) gave me a little wave and drove off into the fading afternoon. This was the last vehicle I would see for many many hours.
That left just me and her dog.
We’re good friends this dog and I. With night approaching I fixed him something delicious out of the cooler and he watched me with suspicion while I made myself a bed on the ground near the front passenger wheel. I tricked him into sleeping in the camper with the door closed. Just in case he got a midnight urge to run away with the Coyote Circus. If my friend came back and I was there and the dog wasn’t? It would be much much more serious than the other way around.
I huddled down into my blankets with a headlamp and the new issue of the New Yorker. I was soon engrossed in the latest story about the veracity of UFO’s.
Alone out in the desert like this, well you almost EXPECT to be abducted by aliens. Yes it could be giant radioactive man-eating ants, or a hungry two-story tarantula, that gets you. But most likely it would be those tricky extraterrestrials.
The stars are thick out there in the desert. The Milky Way is a well-lit parking lot. The moon this night was a 14% waning crescent that rose two hours before dawn. A perfect time and place for observing Unexplained Ariel Phenomenon. And I had the fact checkers at the New Yorker assuring me that these things are real. I’ve always believed that extraterrestrials were pretty unusual. I mean coming all that way to visit and not even stopping to say a proper hello. What kind of a person does that?
The wind howled through much of the night like it was blowing the stars all over the place. I fully expected to be swallowed by either the desert sands or the blackness of outer space. Oblivion either way, but I could go to my death knowing the dog was safe.
The night passed slowly. Only a few lonely falling stars and as far as I could see no aliens. In the morning I passed the time chasing the shadow of the van clockwise, moving my chair every fifteen minutes to try to keep out of the sun. Eventually I was fried on all sides. Medium well done. I had to retreat to the interior of the van where the dog and I stared at each other while panting.
It wasn’t until the next night that my survival was eventually rewarded. Look up in the sky! Really? Was this it? The most amazing thing happened.
As I stood gazing into the night a long string of lights illuminated the southwest quadrant of the sky. A shiver rippled down my spine. The lights were moving quickly upward toward the zenith. They twinkled in a line, like the tail of a long kite. Weather balloons? Swamp gas? Or a fleet of alien space ships that finally got their latest issue of the New Yorker?
The lights stayed on for several minutes and then the line disappeared, one light at a time, like they were engulfed by the cloudless sky, or into the belly of the mother ship…?
I survived my alone time in the deadly desert after I was rescued by a veteran tow truck driver who had apparently laughed at death more times than he would easily admit. I was sunburned but alive. On the long ride out to civilization he told me many stories and not all of them ended so happily. Maybe I had actually been abducted and just didn’t know it? I did feel sort of weird. Sunstroke? Or the afterglow of an alien medical examination?
That night back in Darwin I was leaving my friend’s house and the stars were once again dark and bright. Reluctantly I mentioned my experience.
Oh, she said. Skylar mentioned that were a line up of satellites supposed to be visible after sunset.
Turns out it was only a bunch of Space X Starlink satellites launched by Elon Musk the day before, co-ordinated no doubt as some spectacular adviso because he was hosting Saturday Night Live the next day.
Honestly I was disappointed. It made me want to go back out in the desert and search for giant ants. I was hoping for so much more than an itchy sunburn. But those tricky extraterrestrials can be so unreliable. Sometimes I think they don’t even READ the New Yorker…..