FEBRUARY 9, 2018

After hours of driving through the darkness, we finally spot the sign on the side of the road:

Death Valley National Park, Homeland of the Timbisha Shoshone.

I open the sunroof and poke my head out for a look at the sky. The stars look crystalline, immeasurably detailed. After a minute, I take the wheel from Brennan so he can get a good look. These city boys are impressed. It's good to be back in nature.

Tomorrow, we'll wake up early and head to the Badwater Basin.

FEBRUARY 10, 2018

It's the hottest, driest, and lowest point in North America, but thankfully we're here at sunrise in February. For a few minutes we're the only people on the salt flats. It's so quiet, you can hear your brain.

A short drive to the south, we park at the mouth of Sidewinder Canyon. After about a mile of hiking up the wash, Brennan & I arrive at the first slot canyon. Entering the slot requires climbing over one boulder and crawling under another. Once inside, it's a different world.

The walls close in. The sky is no longer visible, hidden above the twists and folds of the canyon. The temperature drops. Soon, it becomes too dark to see without a headlamp.

The path becomes harder and harder to follow, with more obstacles to climb over. I climb on for 30, now 40, now 50 feet of pitch black before the slot opens up to blinding sunlight.

We explore two more slot canyons before heading back to the car for lunch.

After lunch the weather starts to change drastically. Strong gusts blow in from the northwest as we cruise through the Artist's Drive loop, where colorful mineral deposits paint an impressionist landscape. Mist hangs over the Panamint Mountains.

There's just enough daylight left for a hike through Echo Canyon. A mile or so in, a huge natural arch frames the sunset colors. We hike back to the car in the fading light.

Back at our campsite at Stovepipe Wells, the wind is absolutely howling. Apparently it's been doing so for awhile; our tent is filled with sand.

Brennan & I struggle to cook dinner without everything blowing away. Even our bottles of beer seem to want to run off in the wind. After filling up on chili, I do my best to brush some of the sand off my sleeping bag, but it's a lost cause at this point.

FEBRUARY 11, 2018

There's an upside to last night's crazy wind. We arrive before dawn at the Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes to a smooth canvas. Out on the dunes, there are no footsteps to be seen. Well, no human footprints.

Brennan and I split up to explore different dunes as the sun peaks over the Amargosa Range. Patterns of sand adorn the wind-blown northern side of every ridge.

My shoes fill with sand; I kick them off and shuffle through the still-cold sand. The sun brightens and warms the desert.

After the dunes we scarf some breakfast, break camp, and drive southwest into the Panamint Mountains.

I'd read about some petroglyphs that can be found in Emigrant Canyon, on the drive up to Aguereberry Point. As is usually the case with Native American rock art, there's little information online about the exact location of the glyphs, so I’m going off scant clues.

Brennan & I scour the peculiar cliffs for awhile without any luck, but we do find a couple caves with blackened roofs; signs of human inhabitants in the past.

We drive on along a dirt road. The slope from the valley up to Aguereberry Point is so gradual, you hardly notice that you've ascended over 6,000 feet. The next thing you know, the road leads to a steep edge and the entire valley comes into sight. We eat lunch perched above the desert.

On the way down from Aguereberry Point is Harrisburg, the remnants of Jean Pierre Aguereberry’s gold mine, established in 1905. The basque miner's old house, car, and other ruins remain.

We stop to explore the abandoned mining camp. I’ve explored abandoned places before, and a familiar curiosity takes over me here at Harrisburg. Who was Aguereberry? What was daily life like for him in the desert? What did it feel like to strike gold?

We leave Death Valley after exploring Harrisburg, but I've planned another stop on our trip. A couple hours outside the park, we leave the highway for yet another unmarked dirt road.

A dirt trail leads us through the joshua trees as the sun starts to set behind the Sierras. Obsidian flakes speckle the earth, more signs of human inhabitants. At the end of the trail, a monolithic sandstone boulder towers over us.

Tucked away in the boulder’s alcoves are paintings in deep red, orange, black, and white; native american pictographs. Their meaning has been lost in time.

Some of the paintings are faded, some overlap. I feel like I could spend hours at this boulder, staring at the walls, trying to understand this symbolic language.

Several forms are recognizable; a hand, a lizard. Others are fantastical, human-like creatures with animal features. Some are abstract; unrecognizable formations of curves and lines.