The Southwest: Deep Springs, the Salton Sea and Beyond

16–22 August 2011

I flew into Las Vegas, a truly ghastly city, on the evening of 16 August 2011. The next morning I fled north. My soul began reviving somewhere near here, the valley surrounding Lida, Nevada. I spent the next few days at Deep Springs College, across the border in California. Here, is a photo of the Valley; here is a photo of the endangered Deep Springs Black Toad. Here is a photo of a Chukar running across a road on campus. And here is a photo of Western Fence Lizard, on the President’s house.

After leaving the College on 19 August, I made my way over Westgard Pass, down into the Owens Valley (here is shot of the Valley, with the town of Big Pine nestled below the Sierras). From Big Pine, I headed south down 395. Just south of Independence, you’ll find Manzanar, the most notorious of the World War II era Japanese internment camps. Here is a photo of a guard tower overlooking the camp, with Mt. Whiney rising above in the background; here is a photo of the barracks.

From Manzanar, I continued south, into the Mojave Desert, through Joshua Tree National Park—in which one makes the fascinating pass from the Mojave into the Sonoran Desert—and ultimately to the Salton Sea, to see Yellow-footed Gulls. From here, I hugged the Mexican border and made my way east to Yuma, Arizona, where, the next morning (20 August) I found Crissal Thrashers, and many other great birds as well. Later in the day, in the desert east of Yuma, I had this Lesser Nighthawk (seen here trying to cool itself in the brutally hot conditions) and this Desert Iguana (a species that, for the most part, does not struggle in the extreme heat), amongst much else. Later that afternoon, I spent some time on the rough trails of Kofa National Wildlife Refuge, north of Yuma. At Palm Canyon (here is a second photo, looking south from the canyon) I watched the spectacular sunset—here to the north, and here to the west—with not another soul in sight for scores of miles in all directions across the Sonoran Desert.

The next day (21 August), I made my way north through the Desert, along the Colorado River (here is a photo of the river just north of Parker, Arizona; and here is a photo just below Parker Dam), where you can see what happens when too many people live in a desert. From here I crossed back into California, and made my way along Interstate 40 (it was 113 degrees when I made this photo, just north of Essex, and about a mile south of the interstate, which you can see in the distance), where I found this Greater Roadrunner and this flock of Horned Larks (interesting to see this bird I know from the north coping with the extreme conditions of the desert) before being chased away by a local woman with a gun (!!!!), who apparently recognized me as an outsider and was threatened by my telephoto lens (that’s not a metaphor!). The combination of ferocious sunshine, 113 unrelenting Farhenheit degrees, and unhinged rustic with a gun were more than I cared to battle, so I bid a fond adieu to Essex and headed north through Mojave National Preserve, where I made this self-portrait amongst the Joshua trees, and this shot of Nevada in the distance, at that bewitching, long-shadow moment just before sunset.

Finally, my spirits sinking, I made my way back toward Las Vegas—here is a shot I made (from my car, while driving) of the soul-crushing view on I-40 approaching Nevada from California—before flying home the next day.