a trip to death valley, part 2 - texas spring

This post is part of a series. To read the first post, click here. To see more Death Valley photos, click here.

Texas Spring, a tent and RV campground on the side of a hill, certainly didn't look promising from a distance. Upon first glance it was just a gravel and dirt loop with flat spaces for camping. With no trees and little other large-ish vegetation to shelter us, we felt exposed on that hillside. But as soon as we set up camp and began to look around, we discovered the true advantages of this location. Texas Spring offers a view of the valley below, and it's surrounded by highly attractive rock formations that invite exploration. (Highly attractive rock formations are just asking for it, aren't they?) 

We had arrived not long before sunset, the best possible time for a ramble in the desert. Sundari and I set up our tents and then started walking up the ridge behind us. There was the beginning of a trail but it grew faint as we tried to follow it. We looked at each other and realized, simultaneously, that it didn't matter if we adhered to any specific path. With no trees to obscure our view, we would not get lost. Should we ever wish to ascertain our location, we could run to the top of one of these slopes and look down for the campground.

We began to follow first one trail, then another, laughing for no reason as we climbed higher. We may have been delirious from having spent the entire day inside the RV driving here from Red Rock Canyon. I was conscious of feeling the wonderful sense of freedom that comes from climbing rocks in the sunset while knowing I won't have to get back into a vehicle until the next day.

The ground under our feet had a fascinating texture, utterly satisfying to tread on. It looked softer than it actually was. It crunched under our feet and yielded only faint prints. In the setting sun we climbed higher, talking about what we were seeing, guessing at the soil composition and admiring the colors and deepening shadows of the small peaks around us. We crossed paths with another hiker and stopped to exchange information with him. I think he said something about having gazed at stars the night before. Death Valley, being remote and clear-skied, offers stupendous star-gazing.

We left our new friend to his solitary walking and moved on to investigate other ridges and views. The air was still quite hot but we could feel the temperature lowering as twilight approached. The painful brightness of afternoon light reflecting to us from the white hills had given way to a gentle luminosity. Death Valley seemed reasonable, almost tender, now that the light was less harsh. I was impressed with the difference a few hours could make in my perception of this place, how my strength returned with even this slight drop in temperature.  

We humans are always fragile, but this desert really proves it, I thought. In the distance I saw our fellow hiker, already far away and looking tiny on a distant ridgetop.

Sundari graciously allowed me to photograph her as she strolled ahead of me, taking no path in particular. Eventually we decided we wanted to get closer to the mesquite bushes. Water must be nearby to support the sparse plant life, and we wanted to find it. A deep channel beckoned with the promise of liquid within, and we dove in for a closer look.

Down at the bottom of the little canyon we found a small creek, just a trickle really. Salt-encrusted rocks and mud on the creekbed revealed the presence of minerals in this water. We traced its route down the slope almost all the way to our campground, and then we did the sensible thing, the obvious thing: we took off our shoes and stepped into it. The water was warm, but still cooler than the air around us. The flaky mud at the bottom of the stream felt slippery and sticky at the same time. It was wonderful to immerse even just a hand and a foot in this unexpected bath.

Where did it come from? The mineral deposits it left on either side made it appear unnatural. Runoff from some unseen human endeavor? Terrible chemicals we shouldn't be touching? But our campground was called Texas Spring, so the water near it must come from an actual spring. Still, there was something odd about this water and the gorge it had carved in the hardened dirt. We lacked the data we needed, so I made a mental note to find out more later. Not that I needed to make a mental note; I was taking pictures. I'd wonder about Texas Spring all over again when these shots appeared on my screen at home.

Here's what I found out later, when these photos reminded me to investigate: Texas Spring is a real spring, and where it comes from is more complicated than I thought. I'm not even going to try to explain about the groundwater, the aquifers, the fault zones and ruptures. I had no idea how intricate springs could be, how mysterious their underground flows before they even reach the source.

Texas Spring has been disturbed by humans and completely changed. Before it was altered, it flowed more than 1,500 meters down to Furnace Creek ranch, which is way down the hill and across the road from our campground. Humans diverted it from its source with a trench in the early 1900s, and used its water for a century, until the spring was released back into the ground. The water we saw comes from a pipe connected to that trench, and it's the discharge from that pipe that has carved the channel we explored on our hike.

There is no way of knowing for sure what the area around the Texas Spring source originally looked like, because the alterations happened before any photographs were taken, and the trench construction obliterated its natural characteristics. Efforts are now being made to restore it to something more like its natural condition. Spring restoration is a relatively new field of environmental work, and I found it fascinating. My most useful source of information about this spring was a proposal for its restoration (and for the restoration of several other springs in the park) created for Death Valley National Park by the Desert Research Institute and Colorado State University. If you're interested, you can read that proposal here.

Of course, I knew none of this at the time, just that here was a stream in the desert, seeping down among bare mineral-rich hills in the sunset, and I was getting sleepy. Then came the long twilight, and even though darkness was falling, the air was still warm. A warm night! I had rarely experienced that since moving to Santa Cruz where the nights are always cool. I'm glad I'm sleeping in a tent tonight, I thought.

Exhausted from driving, hiking, and being hot all the long day, I nevertheless kept myself up late that night, far longer than necessary. Because I had the Tent Cot, I didn't have to worry about disturbing other sleepers by stumbling into the RV in the wee hours. I sat at the edge of the campground, yawning ferociously, with no idea of how much time was passing. It was unforgettably divine to be alone and half-awake for hours in the warm darkness, with the stars outrageously bright above.