Light in a Box

Sarah and I were perched on a hill just in time for the waning moments of sunset. We pretty much ran half of the Badlands Loop trail to reach this vantage point before the sun slipped away. The night before, as the sun disappeared a bright orange ray cut through the navy blue of the distant mountains. It was between peaks from the trail that I noticed the band of light and it dissipated before I could get a clear vantage point. With another clear sky and a perch atop one of the dirt mounds I was confident I would capture the moment tonight. However as that sun dipped below the mountains again and the moment came for that orange beam to shoot down the hillside, nothing happened. The sun had found a straggling cloud behind the mountains that killed the beam.   Then next morning we grabbed a great breakfast in Furnace Creek, a little oasis surrounded by desert that includes the visitor center, restaurants, a resort, grass, palm trees and a golf course. From there we drove th...

Think you know what silence is? Maybe you think of a hike in the woods or a cabin by a lake. How about the relief of putting the kids down for a nap or when a tree falls with no one around? Have you ever experienced total silence, the complete absence of sound, so quiet your ears fight to find noise? If not, then you've never been to Death Valley National Park. When you picture Death Valley you might imagine an arid desert, sand as far as the eye can see, or the classic cracked earth and an animal skull. Honestly that isn't far off, you just need to throw in God’s personal collection of unique desert landforms. There are fields of sand but they've piled up into dunes. The cracks in the earth can be dried out mud or a crystallized salt flat. Dry, yes, but water still drains down from the surrounding snow capped mountains. A landscape that endures the hottest temperatures in the country while also dipping below freezing at night. Wherever you go in t...