Pale grass, like white-blonde hair above the salt flats. Snow in the depths. Snow, or salt?
Silky sheen.
It rustles every time the wind passes over, the tufts yield to the pressure of the wave of air then stand up again immediately; only some stalks continue to sway uncertainly to and fro.
The air is cold up here at 2,000 metres, here, at the mountain’s edge above Death Valley, and in the shade of the rocks there remains even a trace of snow – like a veil, which the diligent Californian sun will soon melt away.
We are sitting, sheltered from the wind, in a niche open to the valley and the sun. Renata is wearing the down jacket. On our faces we feel the thin warmth of the December light. A little bit of warmth up here, existing only where the wandering rays touch briefly.
The desert mountains on the other side of the valley are white with snow – and also the salt flats deep down, deep below the level of the sea, seem to be nothing else but snow.
The gentle, soft haze, which in a summer past shrouded the valley floor – this indefinite something which seemed to reach out to us, has disappeared. It has given way to a clarity, hard to comprehend. This landscape under the invading blue of the sky is full of precision, engraved, every rib of rock, every mountain, every ray in the wide fans of gravel is picked out, as if in pen and ink.
Have I come here from Europe for this?
Convincing clarity. Still impressive, yet – ‘It has turned into a landscape of almost German exactness,’ I say.
Renata gives a light laugh, but says nothing.
I step out on to a projecting rock to take a panoramic sequence of photographs – it is the first time I’ve done that in Death Valley. Somehow I want to keep hold of the valley, not let it go. Is it ours still? Are we losing it?
‘Let’s go down there.’
I sense that the valley we know still exists somewhere, hidden.
A few burros, wild donkeys – fairly tame they seem to be – look at us as we drive through a barren canyon towards the valley floor. Are they ‘ours’ ... those of Aguereberry Point? As we stop, one of the animals comes to the window. Yes, we’ve got something for you! While the creature chomps contentedly – Renata is offering it biscuits – I think of the braying we heard last night, over there in the Panamint valley where we had stopped during the long approach near the old gold-digger’s hut. There, the snow-covered silhouettes of the highest ridges of Telescope Peak looked dreamy in the moonlight, and the dark valley below only revealed its width and depth through the distant calls of the burros.
We have reached the floor of Death Valley, pass northwards along the sea of dunes.
To the source.
It is the last place we have come to see. The only one, where I still hope now, in December, to rediscover my old Death Valley. Our Death Valley …
Whenever I think of the source, then that means for me not only water which appears from the earth in the middle of a side canyon of the desert. It means both the water and the tree. Even if there are a couple of other trees not far away, doubtless over a hidden waterway – they are nothing unusual.
But this tree …
It surrounds the source.
At first glance you think it’s many different trees – then you realise: none of them is coming out of the ground, but – like mighty branches, like great shoots from a recumbent trunk – they rear up, all coming from one and the same, almost metre-thick, tree body, which lies on the ground, or sometimes free above it, in many coils, like a sleeping reptile, around the place of the spring. A strange being – the roof of leaves seems to belong to a forest when you look up, and yet it is that of a single tree.
The ground is covered with a thick layer of dry leaves into which you sink with every step. They swish loudly with every movement, rushing almost like a wave when you cross them. It is true it could as well be a sinister place – but it isn’t. To me, it means absolute concord, a little universe – in the centre of which there is the spring. Sometimes a bird appears, touches down at the edge of the water, which seeps almost imperceptibly out of a dark patch of ground from between the leathery brown leaves; it only takes a short way to reach close to the tree body, then it disappears again into the layer of dried leaves. This little water is very special, absolutely silent – it comes out of the ground like the elixir of life; totally clear. And that’s what it is.
The grey-green leaves of this strange tree beat against each other with their hard edges – yes, the wind from the wintry-blue heights has arrived down here too: but it is not cold. Another wave of air – and I hear the pummelling of the leaves like a slow rain shower that moves from branch to branch, stem to stem of the tree-being, which flows and ebbs – sometimes surrounding us here, then approaching again, rustling, from another direction, sometimes shaking the whole tree in a cascade of sound.
We dip our hands into the water, look down on to the black bottom, only a couple of inches deep. ‘In winter, Death Valley is not the same,’ says Renata, wiping a damp hand across her face. It is completely still now. Silently, the water oozes from the floor.
‘Nothing has changed here, but we have been away so long,’ I say, and look up; slowly the leaves in the deep blue sky start to move again, a shower runs through the tree. I myself have been long and far away – I think of the Himalaya.
‘Perhaps it’s we who’ve changed.’
The leaves play their clapper-game. How many days? When they fall, there are new ones. As long as the water comes out of the ground. The tree must be ages old – and has always been in this spot.
Do you still want to tell me something?
Have you nothing else to say?
…
Be still, don’t you hear it? The leaves!
Don’t say a word. Listen.
In this sound is love. And it rises, every moment, beyond the rustling leaves out into the infinite blue.
Death Valley, in winter. Valley of Death?
The valley of – Always.