About Death Valley Jim
Zabriskie Point in Death Valley -
It's Not a Gap...It's an Abyss!
Zabriskie Point,
Death Valley National Park - “How
you get there depends on where you're at.”
For most of my life, I avoided
Death Valley like the plague. The stories about
an ill-fated attempt to reach California by wagon
train in 1849 - 1850 created a daunting image. The
graben of Death Valley holds the record as the
hottest place on Earth, with five consecutive
days in 1913 registering 129 °F (54 °C), or above.
Annual precipitation at Death Valley averages less
than 2.5-inches. Further, its existence as the
lowest point of elevation in the United States
added to the negative connotations in my mind.
Then,
in November 2016, I traveled from
Las Vegas, through
Pahrump, Nevada and on to Death Valley National
Park, California. Other than photos and video I had
viewed of the area, I had no idea what to expect.
What I found upon arrival was reminiscent of a
Martian landscape, rather than Earth. Volcanism,
erosion and rocky or sandy soil abounded. As
distinguished from the
face of Mars, there were a few hardy plants and
animals, but otherwise, normal life-support seemed
unlikely.
Before arriving at my campsite in
Furnace Creek, I visited
Zabriskie Point. Relatively unknown until the
latter 20th century,
Zabriskie Point became the prime location and
namesake of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1970
counterculture flick. Filmed in 1969, with music by
Pink Floyd and Jerry Garcia, the movie features an
incoherent plot, as if the cast and crew were not
only blazing in the sun, but also blazing on
lysergic acid (LSD). In fact, the often-panned, but
now
cinematically celebrated film "set the scene" for
many other desert trips
of
fame or infamy.
On Oct. 12, 1969, at Barker Ranch, in Death Valley,
just north of the San Bernardino County town of
Trona, the murder spree of the
Charles Manson “family” ended with his arrest.
In September 1973, members of the rock band, The
Eagles accompanied singer and songwriter
Gram Parsons to the place and time of his death
in Joshua Tree, California. According to public
records, between October 2003 and November 2013,
twenty people of lesser fame died in or around
Death Valley. On July 6, 2014, hikers in the
badlands near Zabriskie Point discovered the body of
British actor
Dave Legeno, known for his role as werewolf
Fenrir Greyback in three of the ‘Harry Potter’
films. Temperatures at the time of Legeno’s death
were as much as 123 °F (50.5 °C).
In
the film Zabriskie Point, I remember a scene with
the male and female stars standing on a tiny
pinnacle of land. Filmed at sunset, one can see the
Panamint Range looming and glooming in the west.
As the stars embrace, the camera revolves around
them. Amid clouds of dust, we see lots of skin and
writhing bodies. Amidst the whipping wind and the
grand vistas at sundown, we see dozens of couples
apparently copulating on the hillocks below. After
almost fifty years, both film acolytes and the
curious continue to trek up the hill to see that
famous spot. That tiny pinnacle of film-fame has
eroded into dust. Oh, that the faithful shall not
trample
His grave, too.
In 2004, a flash flood swept across the highway,
uprooting and destroying the substantial concrete
pit-toilets previously installed in the parking
area. After extensive repairs, both then and in
2014, there is now a paved pathway, leading up to a
viewing plaza. With its low stone wall, the plaza is
about the size of a baseball diamond. Although the
once remote place called Zabriskie Point is no
longer so remote, the views at sundown are every bit
as exciting or sublime, depending on one’s energies
at the time.
On
November 10, 2016, my first visit to Zabriskie point
occured less than two days after the U.S. election
of “He Who Cannot Be Named” (HWCBN). After sunset, I
lingered to talk with people from across the United
States, and beyond. “Do you think he will open up
the national parks and monuments for oil and gas
exploration?” one man asked. “No”, I replied. “The
U.S. Antiquities Act of 1906, signed by then
president Theodore Roosevelt will protect our
esteemed parks and monuments from HWCBN and his
penchant for
Old Energy exploitation”.
On April 27, 2017, HWCBN signed an
executive order reviewing and attempting to
rollback or eliminate every U.S. national monument
created since the Grand Staircase Escalante National
Monument, during the Clinton administration. The
final list includes the Grand Canyon-Parashant
National Monument in Arizona,
Bears Ears National Monument in Utah and Craters
of the Moon in Idaho. Thank you, Mr. HWCBN for
protecting our national
heritage.
On an April 2017 visit to Zabriskie Point, I noticed
a curious recurring phenomenon. Once again, the sun
set through the abysmal gap, framed by the Panamint
Range, which is visible west of Zabriskie Point. At
sunset, the place darkened like a theater when the
lights go down. After staring toward the sun for the
final fifteen minutes of daylight, my eyes could not
readily adjust to the twilight and approaching
darkness. Although the sun still shone for a time on
the
Amargosa Range to the east, the Zabriskie Point
plaza looked like there had been a solar eclipse.
After gazing around the plaza, I snapped a few
photos of the sunlight as it receded from the
Amargosa Range. As darkness rapidly approached, all
visible landforms were in shadow. Since there was
nothing more to see, I sauntered down the sinuous
pathway that led to the parking lot below. Here is
the
curious part. At the end of each visit, I spotted
several photographers carrying long-lens cameras.
Each was hoofing it up the pathway to the viewing
area. I wanted to say, “It is all over. Don’t even
bother going up there. There is nothing more to
see”.
If you plan to visit Zabriskie Point and view that
famous sunset, do not refer to the
official sunset times listed in your almanac or
on a weather website. They will list the time of day
when the sun slips below the Earth’s horizon, not
when it disappears behind the Panamint Range, which
may be ten or fifteen minutes earlier.
Each time that I observed a Zabriskie Point sunset,
several photographers ran toward the ancient plaza.
With the sun already set, one can only hope that
they arrived in time to take pictures of the
abyss.