I enjoy driving, so I was disappointed at how quick I came upon the Valley of Fire exit (only 40 some miles outside of Vegas). I took Exit 75 and a road sign read: Valley of Fire 18 mi. I followed the single lane highway as it led me to a low-lying range of hills approximately 12 miles south of the interstate. There were a few clouds in the sky and the sun blazed an iridescence of auburn. Soon I was entering the range through a canyon where the elf-shrub-forest of the valley gave way to taller, more prominent fauna, and the craggy cliffs loomed over the highway on either side of me. Carved into the cliffsides were natural dens, perhaps at times inhabited by a lonesome, vagabond coyote. They’re vacant now.

I rounded the next bend and came to the entrance of the Valley of Fire State Park. The usual scene: snot-nosed kids screaming and flailing, parents not parenting, signs reading “No Fireworks” and “No Hunting,” and service rangers collecting money. I paid a nominal fee and was handed a small piece of paper on which was inscribed the number 28 in crayon. Tossing it onto my dashboard I gave the grizzled park ranger the old have-a-pleasant-day nod and drove off to the fiery cliffs rising just beyond the park entrance.

The rock in this area is mainly the oxidized sandstone that lends Red Rock Canyon its exotic, vibrant-red beauty. But a discerning eye could also spot limestone, conglomerates and shales in the region. Driving further into the Valley, keeping a lookout for what I like to call points of exploration (POE), I marveled at the intensity of color and form of the geology; sheer cliffsides of rust-red oxidization, punctuated by dark-varnished holes. This valley is riddled with geologic anomalies: rocks that look like beehives, elephants, ducks and frogs, rocks that balance, rocks that don’t, upside down rocks, and on it goes. I shouldered my car at the first exhibit—Beehive Rock—and stepped outside to stretch my bones.

“Ok, everybody look now!” shouted a man in khaki shorts as he aimed his Nikon at a swarm of kids clambering and farting atop Beehive rock (Mormons come down from Utah). I smiled but died a little inside. I turned down a trail leading away from the scene and I contemplated the paradox of Ed Abbey’s Industrial Tourism, but I hesitate to bore you with this. (Mostly deals with the un-wilding of once-isolated wilderness.)

I went walking down a gulch of loose gravel. There were more people scrambling up rocks, everywhere—agitated ant-hills. The mid-day sun shone fierce and melted my brain. I foolishly left my water in the car. Not wanting to return just yet, I wandered a bit further down the gulch and plopped-down in the shade offered by a creosote bush. Now that I was away from the playground I could hear myself think.

My eyes panned the southern horizon; my olfactory delighted by the desert wild-brush. To the southwest, beyond the rust-burnished cliffs but rising higher, standing taller, I see two mountains, twin peaks of ancient dolomite, assuming the shapes of rogue waves—their crests frozen in space and time—waiting to crash down on a civilization of their choosing!

…and the seraphim will cry!
…and the cherubim will cry!
…to the archers in the sky!

With this thought, all became quiescent, all became still. I sat in relative silence (I could hear the faint gaiety of children laughing and playing; good for them). I hoped to see a scorpion basking on a nearby rock, but the day was in full bloom and it was far too hot to ask of this favor. Though earlier I saw a healthy whiptailed lizard lunge at a butterfly, just missing her—good enough for me.

Stifled by the heat, I stood up from my shaded-den and wiped the stones from my jeans and crunch-crunched up the rocky gulch back toward the car, admiring the desert plant community along the way. In the fall, the Valley of Fire and surrounding rangeland is thick with creosote bush, brittlebush, burro bush and various species of cacti including the cholla cactus and beaver-tail cactus. Until this day, I’ve only visited the Valley in springtime, when the wildflowers—the desert mallow, indigo bush and the desert marigold bush—are in full and glorious bloom.

The sky was big and blue and unobstructed. At this point in the day, an isolated, ethereal wisp of white-cloud appeared here and there, but nothing more. Thankfully, the weatherman was wrong (The night before I asked my girlfriend to pray for a clear day, a twist on the old rain-dance, I now wonder if she did).

Coming back up the gulch, I noticed the mass of people had moved out and into their air-conditioned mini-vans. Their playground was now mine. I examined the rock formations on the upper-most stretch of the ravine. Walking the length of a long, fish-shaped boulder, I ran my hand along its surface. Innumerable windstorms and rainstorms and flashfloods had weathered these rocks and smoothed them into blown glass, hand-blown by something greater—possibly. I then climbed its back and stood triumphantly on the fish’s head; Veni, Vidi, Vici! But I felt no different.

A gaunt and lanky, middle-aged man appeared from an outcropping of boulders. His dress was humble enough for me to question if he might live in the rocks from which he emerged, only bearing the brunt of the desert sun for a chance at conversation. I obliged.

“You see these rawks right here,” he shouted to me (I kept my distance), “They’s neat! They’s were once laying flat until Mother Nature did this to ‘em.”
“They is neat!” I holler back.
“They’s Amaaaazing!”
“Yes, sir! They is incredible!”

This was the extent of our conversation; a couple of elitists in a conflagration of agreeance. (However, I do recall likening the giant, free-standing boulders to islands rising from a sea of gravel, at which point he turned and walked away). He was a good man, probably more appreciative of his surroundings than the collective population of a hundred mini-vans of people.

I climbed down and observed hasty scribblings in the scales of my fish boulder:

Alto was here – Phillipines
Matty 2009

F%*#! The Petroglyphs of our era!

I drove deeper into the Valley, into towering columns and wild spires of mountaintops reaching to the heavens. The whole scene was epic and reminiscent of the rugged Bolivian Southwest, where I once hiked half-drunk deep into the canyon country of Tupiza with a couple of Israeli mountain-men and a German girl I’d met in the northernmost border-town of Argentina. But that was then.

Atlatl rock, probably fascinating, but I refused to join the mobs of tourists clank-clanking their clumsy feet up the anti-thematic iron-staircase and into the mountainside. I wondered to myself if there was a rollercoaster, or some sort of thrill-ride in the side of that mountain. Going right on by, I entered a dirt-road that looped around a good portion of the fire-red and blackened crags. Their faces, from the bedrock of gravel to the tip of their precipice, gleaned and scowled at me through their countless wind-carved huecos. The cliffs looked like corrugated sheet-metal; junkyard sheet-metal all weathered and rusted, worked over and rattled by a wild-eyed boy with his .22 rifle. They were marvelous!

No sooner did these poetic thoughts enter my mind that I got a headache. Reminded that I was in the desert, I reached for my water—long live the human body, the enigmatic self-regulating machine! I drove on. Dark clouds formed and gathered over the northern cliffs and riding in on the thermals was a red-tailed hawk—wings spread in full arch—primeval as its motherland. Long live the desert!

Some gazillion years ago, this great expanse of arid-desert was under water; it was nothing more than a bed to a sea. As the earth spun on, the sea ebbed gradually and, after eons, beached the mountains of our world. Or so it’s told. The oxidized (literally “rusted”) sandstone is said to be aged between 66 and 250 million years. Layed out during the Mesozoic era by migrant sands brought in on violent winds, they first became prominent dunes and later ossified, or “fossilized” into the geologic formations we see today. The gray mountains of dolomite, standing solemnly back in the haze and silence of day, date back a possible 500 million years to the Paleozoic era. (Note: The “Muddy Mountain Thrust,” not to be confused with the Kama Sutra position, is the name of the complex sequence of shifting plates which created these grandfather mountains).

A crude history of the region’s past and present inhabitants: Said to be first inhabited by the dinosaurs—then the Gypsum People or “cavemen,” the Basketmakers, the Anasazi who couldn’t adapt to the harsh desert extremes, the nomadic (adaptable) Southern Paiute Indians, the invaders and finally the settlers (early Mormons and us today)!—these hills and valleys hold the prayers and curses of many a civilization.

Off I went. I hiked a short trail which looped a semi-circle from the roadside, back to the roadside, where Elephant Rock stands; a misplaced yet impressive boulder naturally eroded into the form of an elephant. I took a picture and left. The elephant was positioned too near to the road for me to fully appreciate its novelty. I felt as though I was mid-way through a rag-tag safari—a field-trip to the zoo! I couldn’t help but think this elephant, this wild beast, once stood majestic and free at the foothill of his mountain with no roads, no cars, no gawkers wielding Nikons, no khaki shorts and whining kids, no trash at its feet, no-thing, no-body, no eyes; only the hostile desert land with whom to roam free and finally and with dignity, grow old and die with. Without a doubt, our elephant is leaving this world behind, slowly. (It will succumb to time; though not before us).

The desert—a slow-moving river, ever-changing with fluidity—the sum of its parts. I’m no geologist, but it’s my hope that some millions of years from now, Elephant Rock will be reduced to “Tortoise Rock” or “Kit-Fox Rock,” or who knows maybe it’ll be known to some inner or outer-stellar galactic creatures as “Once-Was Rock”—and the whole earth all the same!

I hiked further still, beyond the disconsolate beast and into a slot-canyon. The clouds tumbled in and paradoxically enveloped the sun while intensifying its light. Earlier, a ranger at the Ranger Station told me Rainbow Vista was a good bet to watch the sunfall. According to the sun’s position and my Timex watch, I still had an hour and so I went exploring.

I found a small, bored-out rock-cave which was only accessible by a small crack in the rock. I had no other choice but to name it “Crack-Rock Cave.” I climbed inside and sat and wrote and peered through a hole at the outer-world, the other-world. I thought of the hole in the rock as a sort-of looking-glass where I could catch only a fleeting glimpse of the Valley of Fire, and only a small portion at that. Then I thought of the entire Valley, and how in its grandeur of 35,000 sprawling acres, it is merely a looking-glass through which we might catch a glimpse of a much larger desert landscape, and how all the desert in the world is a mere looking-glass to the greater diversity of Earth as a planet, and how the planet is . . . and on I went. Eventually growing weary of my own philosophical meanderings, I left my temporary domicile of Crack-Rock Cave and went light-footed down the trail.

The sun accepted its fate and rested quietly in the gallows of the sky. Soon and without much of a struggle, it would die in the arms of tomorrow. (The sun seems to burn its brightest in its final minute. Unlike sentient beings, it’s fully aware of its continuous rebirth, I think). Anyway, I high-tailed it to Rainbow Vista to watch the scene. Along the way, I made a quick detour to Mouse’s Tank, where a couple hundred years ago a “Renegade Paiute Indian used the natural tank to hideout from the law.” Marketing ploy, I bet. There were petroglyphs, too. But I’m too much a skeptic so no photos were taken. The sheer mass of people had me quickly bailing to Rainbow Vista, and good thing, soon ominous storm-clouds gathered clenched-jaw and all above the jagged crags. Nobody was safe!

Rainbow Vista, with its Disney-like hordes of people, was quickly aborted. This was the only real letdown of the day. There were people—everywhere! Big people and little people and people on the tops of other people; I couldn’t do it. I bid a kind farewell to the Valley of Fire and got in my car and went straight for the highway.

I was pulled over by Highway Patrol for speeding, but after explaining the urgency of getting home to leftover Thanksgiving dinner, the officer let me go. With a slightly corrected pace, I was soon barreling southbound on Interstate 15, headlong into a sunset all my own! And that was my Saturday.