Recently in Death Valley Category

Clearly the photograph of the dunes in Death Valley below is far away from the actual conditions which were there while I shot the picture or maybe not? It is a photograph after all. There is an interesting feeling to this image... and this is why I want to keep it here... for a little while, maybe?...

Tried to turn of the Air Conditioning for a while, just to listen to the silence of the valley and maybe sleep without any noise at all for a while. It felt nice for a few minutes, until my hearing became sharper and the other air conditioners from the other cabins became seemingly as loud as the one I had just turned off. Oh, and the heat crept into the room, slowly, and it began to choke me. So now my own AC is going through its various sequences again, the sounds of compression and decompression are another reminder that this here is a very mild version of experiencing reality. Adjusted reality makes it possible for me to be here, more than 2000 miles away from home, which in itself is thousands of miles away from where I was born. I will need to remind myself of some of these things next time I complain about technology being too important perhaps?... I tried to imagine the tank with the gasoline I burned with the car this past week. It was a rather big tank. I should probably be sleeping now. I will be taking the redeye flight tomorrow... and there is a reason why it has this name... .

It is so tempting to perceive many of the trees on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon as dead. Their trunks are bare, bleached, stripped of bark, twisted, pushed to the ground. Upon closer inspection, the trees reveal a more complex picture. Between the deep ridges of their bare wood are often drops of fresh golden sap. Their oddly alive branches carry not only needles but what looks like little green fruit. These are very old plants and they are far from the end of their life cycle. Often the longest life is not the one lived most glamorously and in a rushed manner. Sometimes the long life is the one that is filled with slow growth, many seemingly painful adventures, which are however survived... and well, a lot of slowly flowing time. Do we humans appear to these trees a bit as if we were one day flies?... If we would appear at all, we maybe would. Really pesky and loud ones I bet.

Oh, just for the record, I managed to travel to some places far beyond death Valley... here are some pictures... hmm... and I guess I will need to explain something about these pictures, but maybe later... ; )

When I stepped out of the car around sunrise on the first morning in Death Valley, there was no sound. It was completely, perfectly quiet. There were no birds, no insects, no people, no cars, no police sirens, even the wind stopped for a few moments... It was so incredibly peacefully quiet. Maybe more so because I was inside of a huge landscape, and so I barely even heard myself breathe... Yes, I am one of the very few people who actually chose to go to Death Valley during the off season. It was magical...

and whenever it appears that things are completely clear, this is the moment when they begin to not be. and when everything looks completely established, this is when it begins to not be. and when everything appears calm, this might be the beginning of a storm, and when things look very dark, then there might be some light around one of the corners... and when i look around here and I see the images and the words of which some traveled so far to be with me. some of them were here before. some of them came with me for the ride. and we are here, in this perfect moment just about now and now only and this perfect moment is here to never return in this particular way. it will be so completely different tomorrow. it really will be. not only tomorrow... in a few split seconds... there... this humming was much more quiet wasn't it?... and what about this pain in the leg? there are voices around the corner now... some familiar. some definitely are not. i can not express how much i am looking forward to going to the desert. i hope that there will be nothing. and i know that there will be everything. and both possibilities are perfectly fine. and i will dive through the experience and the experience will just blow right through me, with little particles stuck to every atom of me. it is all good... somehow... at some point... i am now smiling just to cheer myself up, with all might, somehow... please. good. that shaky ground is not even a ground... i think... and the balance of things is neither balance nor things... well... maybe...

the last thing I remember from Death Valley are the bugs and the birds. The bugs were everywhere... they walked on the floor only, they were a fast walking kind. I stepped on one (I think by accident) and it made a sound as if somebody crushed some dired pepper and immediately turned into black dust... and so black dust did not look like black dust ever again. The birds, the smart birds, they were everywhere as well, outside at least... I felt observed... stalked... And the desert. It was the most powerful one, the one that did not care to look particularly pretty, it was just there to be very, very low and very hot and very dry. (Surrounded by spectacular mountains...) I decided to return to death valley. I am going to go in the "off season", not in the top heat of July, more at the end of May, June?, but still... I am going there, so I can touch the glowing, salty ground... in the morning... around sunrise. Then again, hopefully, around sunset. I want to see the universe hide behind the blue veil of the day and I want to see it reappear at night. I will probably take pictures. I will definitely draw. But I am not going to visit the desert in order to spend time looking at paper or at a picture taking machine. I just want to go back to a place that I have been thinking about for about 5 years now... Oh and I am also not going to perform any suicidal adventures. There will be no stupid midday hikes, no staring at the sun. I am much too aware that the desert would not even break into sweat killing me... And so I will be very, very careful... and I am going to write about it... I hope...