Death Valley   From Laughlin to the dam through Las Vegas diagonally on the freeways—my interest was seeing my one national park in this area, and my sixth of the trip, before going back to Las Vegas afterward for a change of pace.

The name Death Valley had always repelled me, and concerned me a bit, since they regularly warn you of the temperatures, and to carry water in case of car breakdowns. It always seemed to me to be a dangerous place and more than I’d want to try, perhaps something to be left to the Boy Scouts and the hikers. But it all turned out to be a piece o’ cake, and for me was the most enjoyable park visit and stay of this trip.

The park is huge, the largest NP in the contiguous 48 states. It’s almost entirely in California, with just a tiny piece on the Nevada side of their long, common border, which is diagonal at this point. We can note here that the diagonal part of the border separating NV and CA between Lake Tahoe in the northwest and the Colorado River south of Laughlin (where both states meet Arizona) is the longest diagonal state border in the country, just over 400 miles/640 kilometers.

Roads crisscross the park in all directions. The most interesting area is the central part surrounding the ominously-named main village of Furnace Creek. Ominous it may sound, but after you’ve been there you realize that the whole area is charming and not in the slightest bit ominous.

I decided to drive into the park just north of Furnace Creek coming out of Beatty NV. After a night in Furnace Creek, I would then leave just south of it for Las Vegas. Coming out of Beatty, I first entered the small piece of the park located in Nevada before crossing into California. Curious about it, I asked a park ranger about it the next day. Sometime perhaps in the 1950’s some artifacts or maybe mines were found there and it was found worthy of adding to the park, which had been wholly in California until then. This section is, as I learned, referred to as the Nevada Triangle. It has that odd shape, first because it’s on that long diagonal border, and the rest conforms to local township lines. But the ranger couldn’t help but adding one “dig”. Apparently, there is one very small, minor NP entirely in Nevada elsewhere that no one’s ever heard of, but, he said, the Nevada Triangle turns out to be bigger than it is, so, standing in the huge California part of Death Valley, he taunts that the tiny Nevada Triangle turns out to be the biggest NP in Nevada. To paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, Nevada don’t get no respect.

Coming over the mountain pass at the state line, the first view down into the valley at this point is the typical vast, silent, stark landscape, but at this point also including the huge sand dunes at Stovepipe Wells. They look like piles of sugar as you descend from the heights and approach them.

I could have turned left immediately for Furnace Creek, but opted instead to take a round trip to the northern part of the valley, up to Scotty’s Castle, a mansion built before the area became a park by someone with too much money. The advantage going north first was that I saw this northern area, then went back south to the central part of the valley around FC. Picture the valley as being rather wide, but much, much longer than wide (5-25 miles/8-40 kilometers wide, but 130 miles/210 kilometers long). Coming down from the north I got excellent late afternoon views of the rays of the setting sun hitting the colorful mountains on both sides of the valley. These form a bowl, and also keep in the accumulating heat, causing the phenomenal temperatures the valley is known for.

Passing the sand dune area again and slowly descending in the approach to Furnace Creek, I saw the first of several roadside traffic signs, which were actually quite amusing to see. It said quite simply:

and the road continued gently downward into the tiny village of Furnace Creek.

Before continuing on the adventures in and around Furnace Creek, let’s discuss the background of it all, but, in summary, keep in mind these images, since I myself had envisioned the area quite differently. Picture this very long, narrow, low basin, REALLY low in one area; high mountains around it making it into a bowl, or, given its length, perhaps you could call it a trough; this unusual shape holding in the heat, yielding very high temperatures in the summer; a beige palette of colored rock formations, but other colors as well.

First, why is it there? As it turns out, the answer is quite easy. It’s not a valley at all, it’s just called that because it’s an easy word to use. What we have here is a natural depression, but no one’s about to call it “Death Depression”. In 1849, a group of Midwesterners trying to reach the goldfields further on in California came across this valley/depression, tried to cross it, got lost, and suffered a number of fatalities. That’s the basis for using the word “Death” in the name, but what a turn-off that name is, given the open, silent beauty of the area. One could suggest renaming it “Pretty, Quiet, Deep Depression”, but then they’d start calling the psychiatrists in with their pills, so Death Valley it will remain.

By why is there a depression? This is the most interesting point of the matter. Death Valley is nothing more than a dried-out lake bed, which explains it all. Geologists have named the ancient lake here Lake Manly (Manly was one of those Forty-Niners). It is possible that Lake Manly drained into the Colorado River. Hard as it is, given current temperatures, to picture glaciers here, Lake Manly was the result of glacial runoff, but 10,500 years ago, once the glaciers retreated, reducing the water source, Lake Manly started to dry up, leaving a deep—emphasis on deep—dry lake bed.

Today there is a curious equilibrium here. DV’s floor is sinking, and the mountains around it are rising. But the eroding mountains are filling the valley at about the same rate that it sinks, maintaining the status quo. DV also has no outlet to the sea, so minerals washed down from the mountains are here to stay.

Aside from those Forty-Niners, the other instance of a degree of human habitation in the valley involves the discovery of borax here in the 1880’s. Chinese workmen were brought in to gather the surface borax, and pre-process it. Remnants of the mining area and a borax museum can still be visited in and around Furnace Creek. Wagon trains then hauled the borax (antique wagons can still be seen) for ten days 165 miles/266 kilometers to the railhead at Mohave. The borax itself on these wagon trains weighed 24 tons, the entire weight was 36.5 tons. Do these wagon trains sound familiar? They should, because you’ve heard of them for years.

I would imagine the advertising campaign for this borax must have been one of the more clever ones over the years. It was advertised as “Twenty-Mule-Team Borax” for years and years, and I remember the silhouette on the containers of all the mules pulling the wagons. I just didn’t know that the borax they were transporting came out of Death Valley. I say it’s clever, since these teams were used for less than a decade, and that decade was back in the 1880’s (1881-9), yet that slogan lasted for years.

And, as a professional nit-picker, I’ll point out this inaccuracy: those “twenty-mule-teams” consisted of 18 mules and 2 horses. I think I recall reading somewhere years ago that the not-too-clever mules needed the cleverer horses to guide them on the route. But they needed just a bit of “poetic” license. You couldn’t very well have called them “twenty-pack-animal-teams”.

As I noted in the Borax Museum, apparently borax was used over all those years as a cleaner and whitener, in soaps and detergents. I hear that most borax today comes from—where else?—China. I also read that its most common use today is in making fiberglass, of all things. It is also used to make the glue that holds corrugated cardboard together. And don’t forget boric acid. But those twenty-“mule”-teams have long been gone forever.

Now about those temperatures. Keep in mind that the sun beats down on the valley floor, and that ground temperatures can reach 200°F/93°C. As bad as that sounds, that can’t be unique, especially if you’ve ever tried to walk barefoot along a beach where the sand has had a chance to warm up. If you have, you’ve also done that “beach sand jig” as you try to get away from the sand. But the difference is that, in DV, that heat has no escape route, such as by sea breezes over beach sand, so it builds up.

I had just watched the sun set, bringing out the colors in the rocks, when I checked in at the Furnace Creek Ranch. I asked about the evening temperature, and it was still 103°F/almost 40°C. When I set out the next day to visit the valley, it was already 115°F/46°C. Now if anyone suffers from the heat, it’s me, but these numbers aren’t really bad, because it’s a very dry heat, and feels about the same as hot weather anywhere, even when walking a short distance on a trail at a DV stopping point.

The average daily highs at Furnace Creek for June are 109°/43°, July 115°/46°, August 113°/45°, September (when I was there) 106°/41°. By contrast, for January it’s 65°/18°.

But now for some fun: on 10 July 1913, the hottest temperature ever recorded in the US was at Furnace Creek, 134°F/56.7°C. It’s only hotter in the Sahara, where the hottest temperature ever recorded on Earth was in Libya on 13 September 1922, 135.9°F/57.7°C.

Although I didn’t see the actual creek in the tiny village, apparently there is one in Furnace Creek, making it an oasis, where they’ve planted palm trees everywhere. Furnace Creek Ranch was a working ranch in the 1880’s, and it was, yes, home to the twenty-mule teams, and today includes the Borax Museum. The accommodations were fine, and for the third time this trip, I spent the night in a comfortable, air-conditioned log cabin. As you might suspect, since I passed the “Sea Level” sign on the way in, Furnace Creek is 190ft/57.9m BELOW sea level. It was the one and only time I’ve spent the night below sea level, since it was only a day trip out of Jerusalem when we went to visit the Dead Sea years ago.

The only other accommodation in Furnace Creek is Furnace Creek Inn. Both are run by a concessionaire for the NP. It’s apparently a plush resort, and, given that, it’s only open in the cooler seasons. You can see the Inn, just a short distance away up the hill from the Ranch, but it’s at a nosebleed altitude. Another one of those signs outside the Inn says that it’s way up at sea level.

Many people can spend weeks of vacation at national parks. I just want to see what it’s all about, and that’s it, such as with Yellowstone, Yosemite, and others years ago. It’s the same with the NPs I visited this trip: been there, done it. But I have a certain affection for the FC area of DV. If I come back to Vegas in the near future—and I might—I might consider another visit to DV. If I came back in cooler weather, I’m sure I’d do it, just to experience the contrast. The Inn is tempting, but I liked my log cabin at the Ranch. We’ll have to see.

The Ranch has a surprisingly good restaurant, but it’s not food I want to talk about. I heard a lot of German being spoken there by diners, and when the waiter presented the bill, he pointed out that “it being our Euroseason”, a service charge had already been included. That required an explanation. It seems that in the warmer weather, 90%--that’s a full NINETY PERCENT—of visitors to NPs are from Europe, especially the three big ones in a row, Yosemite, Death Valley, Grand Canyon. And since the Europeans are used to a service charge included, the restaurant does so. I told him I wished that that included service charge idea could be taught to Americans, as well. Since the summer season is the time most Europeans have off, they have no choice but to be here in this weather, a time when few Americans (ahem) visit the area. This explained the German I was hearing in DV. It also explained why, when I was coming back up from the Spruce Tree House in Mesa Verde, I encountered a cascade of Italian speakers coming down the hill, and also why on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, there was a huge contingent of French speakers going along. A number of them were in wheelchairs, so it must have been a French handicapped group, and an inordinate number of them were fascinatedly taking pictures of—a squirrel.

I remember when, in contrast to Europe, you never heard visitors to the US speaking other languages, and I certainly welcome this flood of visitors. This interesting phenomenon continued the next day when I stopped at the Visitor Center, largely to people-watch. Although the rangers were speaking English, I noticed one of them explaining the difficulties of camping in DV in the summer because of the temperatures, which he gave in Celsius. I spoke to a number of rangers about European visitors, and they confirmed the information I’d been gathering. A French speaker was fumbling in English to say something, so I broke in in French. (It’s all part of the game for a Travelanguist.)

A woman asked a ranger in English if he had a brochure in Czech. I smiled when he said no, but my jaw dropped when he said he expected they’d have one by next year! This made me go over to their collection of brochures to see what was there. These were the titles I saw:

Just south of Furnace Creek I made four stops, from low to high interest, as it were. The first and last stops were the most fascinating.

A drive south in the valley of about 20 minutes gets you to Badwater Basin. It seems that all the names here are trying to drive you away (Death, Furnace, Badwater), but do not be fooled. You’ll miss out on the time of your life.

Badwater Basin is a salt flat. Apparently someone tried to water his mule at the pool of water here and the mule balked and wouldn’t drink, yielding this name. The water wasn’t poisoned, it was just too salty (although I suppose too much of that could kill you, too). There are several salts in the water, but the most common is NaCl, sodium chloride, yes, common table salt. I assume an underground spring feeds the pool.

The park service has a concrete terrace on the side of the road just above the wet part of the pool. You go down a couple of steps to a boardwalk on its edge, then can walk straight ahead onto the salt flat. Everything is white. Well, why not, since you’re walking in a salt shaker. The salt seems to compact more than sand, so you have a rather solid footing. Some people walked out way into the distance; in the hot sun (remember, it was 115°/46° that day), I just walked out about five minutes’ worth: after a while, salt is just salt. As to the temperature, I emphasize again: it just felt like a hot day, nothing more.

To see the salt pool and the salt flats would be interesting enough to visit Badwater Basin, but that’s not really why you come here. There’s got to be a good reason why all these salts accumulate down here, and the keyword there is “down”.

Badwater Basin is the lowest point in Death Valley, the lowest point in California, the lowest point in the US, the lowest point in all of North America. As you walk the salt flats, you are 282 feet/ 85.5 meters BELOW SEA LEVEL.

Just across the road where the car is parked, they’ve done a clever thing. Up the mountain slope, up, up, they’ve put another one of those signs that say SEA LEVEL. If you allow roughly ten feet per story, 282 feet would be about the height of a 28-story building. Now, that’s UP.

All the continents have points that are below sea level, just google the topic. A bit of thought, and you’ll want to argue that that doesn’t include Antarctica, but it most certainly does. It’s just that Antarctica’s point(s) below sea level are all under ice (!!!), particularly if it’s indeed true that Antarctica is really two land masses with a bunch of (low) islands in the center.

But it’s exposed land that’s below sea level that really matters. Of all the points below sea level on the various continents, it’s Asia’s, the Dead Sea, that wins the prize as being the lowest on Earth. But that requires explanation. How can a body of water be the lowest point of land?

It works like this: the SHORELINE of the Dead Sea (between Israel and Jordan) is the lowest point on earth not under water (or ice). But amazingly, that has to be even further defined, since the numbers keep changing constantly.

The Jordan River feeds the Dead Sea. In modern times, so much river water is being diverted for agricultural and other reasons, that the level of the Dead Sea keeps dropping and dropping. At present, it’s dropping three feet/one meter PER YEAR! This means the silhouette of the sea keeps shrinking, and the shoreline keeps dropping. The last reading I have is that the lowest land point on earth, the shoreline of the Dead Sea, is 1371ft/418m below sea level, but those numbers now are assuredly higher, that is, the shoreline is lower.

Given the fact that Lake Manly dried out, through natural forces, with only its depression left in the form of Death Valley, it would be ironic if the Dead Sea dried out, through man-made forces, with only ITS depression left. It’s enough to put you into a state of depression. (!!!)

But it’s all uphill from Badwater Basin. (!) Retracing your path, you pull off on a one-way side road called Artist’s Drive. The landscape is splashed with colors, which is most spectacular when you reach the section called Artist’s Palette. Mixed in with the usual beiges are large areas of color. Iron compounds produce the reds, pinks, and yellows; mica and copper produce the greens; manganese produces the purples.

Moving still higher, you come to Zabriskie Point, named after Christian Zabriskie, who was an early 20C Vice President and Manager of the Pacific Coast Borax Company. The name “Zabriskie Point” gained further renown based on the 1970 Antonioni film of that name about the counterculture. It bombed at the box office, but the title remains well-known. At Zabriskie Point you walk uphill in the sun and heat (still, not so bad) some 200 yards/meters to look down on some colorful rock formations in a swirling pattern.

But, along with Badwater, the fourth of these stops is the icing on the cake. Almost leaving the park, a side road takes you in some twenty minutes up a slope, gentle at first but up to a 14% grade right at the last little bit at the top end (not bad, but no campers or RVs allowed) and you reach heaven. Heaven takes the form here of the paved terrace known as Dante’s View.

If you see nothing else here, see Dante’s View. OK, Badwater, too. All right, don’t skip Furnace Creek. But Dante’s View is the cream. You are on the top ridge of the mountains on the east side of the valley/basin/depression. Across, on the west side, is the highest mountain in the park at 11,049ft/1782m. You are at less than half that, but here, it’s quality, not quantity that counts.

You look down on the lower central portion of Death Valley, way, way below. In the distance to your right, you see an oasis of palm trees; that must be Furnace Creek. To your left, you see the lower end of the basin. Right below you is Badwater. You can’t see it, since it’s directly under you at the foot of the mountain, but you can see how far the “snowy” salt flats extending to the bottom of the mountains on the west side. The view is exhilerating.

Dante’s View is at 5475 ft/1669m. The temperature is MUCH noticeably cooler, actually very comfortable. The mountain across is twice as high, but you’re on top of the world.

Actually, more than you think. A mile being 5280 feet, you are more than a mile high. But it really is more than you think, because that measurement goes down to sea level. And the salt flats are below sea level. You have to add your distance above sea level, 5475/1669 to the distance below sea level of Badwater, 282/85.5, and you find you are actually 5757 ft/1754.5 m above the ground below. It isn’t often you have to combine two measurements to see how high you are above the ground.

There had been 2-3 cars on the terrace before I got there, which then left. For a while, I was alone before 1-2 more cars arrived. I read the plaque up there that said that in Death Valley you experience “a quietness so intense that it rings in the ears”. That’s true at most places in Death Valley, and, given your height, particularly true at Dante’s View.

In those few very memorable minutes that I was totally alone at Dante’s View, first I enjoyed the silence, then, knowing what I had researched about Dante long in advance, I willfully broke that silence. Although it had very little affect, given the vastness around me, I nevertheless shouted over the edge and down into the void: Lasciate ogni speranza, voi qu’entrate. Obviously, therein lies a tale.

Dante   Knowing at least a year in advance I’d be going to Dante’s View over Death Valley made me curious about Dante in general, and researching Dante at that time got me started offering the literary quotations we’ve been doing this year. But Dante’s is an interesting story.

His full name was Dante Alighieri. His first name started out as Durante, but got shortened. His dates center on 1300 (1265-1321). He’s one of those figures that we always call by their first name, such as Michelangelo (Buonarroti) or Raphael=Raffaello (Sanzio). In most languages, Leonardo (da Vinci) is also only called by his first name, except in English, at least American English, where he’s “Da Vinci”. In any case, these others lived two full centuries later, so Dante (Alighieri) is indeed an early figure.

His early date is significant in the evolution of modern languages. Athough Classical Latin had died with the Romans, a form of it, with more contemporary pronunciations varying by local languages, continued for many centuries. We’re talking about the long pre-Gutenberg period characterized by illiteracy of the masses. Only scholars, clergy, and royalty could read, so any documents of importance on lofty topics were written in this updated Latin for maximum circulation among the international literati, which had been educated in it, while local languages remained for everyday use.

Dante was among those who changed that, as did Chaucer and Boccaccio. He wrote his masterwork in a language he called Italian, based on his Tuscan dialect. For this reason, Tuscany to this day sets the standard for Italian speech. Dante is called Il Padre della lingua italiana/The Father of the Italian Language. Using contemporary languages allowed more to be published for a wider audience, which set the stage for greater literacy in the future.

He called his masterwork La Commedia; later Boccaccio added Divina, and it is known today as La Divina Commedia. It is the central work of Italian literature, and one of the central works of world literature. As with most works we discuss here, I have little to no direct knowledge, and discuss only what the research shows.

La Divina Commedia (1308-1321) is an epic poem that gives the medieval world view of the afterlife. It’s in three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso (Hell, Purgatory, Paradise), in which Dante describes his own travels in the three realms of the dead.

That is what I am informed, and I think is all we need to know, but my interests involve the words we are using here. We have a lot of mistranslations. First, what exactly does La Divina Commedia mean? Is someone telling jokes here?

The word “comedy” in English, with counterparts in other languages, does retain the old Greek distinction of Tragedy versus Comedy, but that isn’t the case everywhere. In other languages the equivalent word has taken on the general meaning of “drama” or “story”. For instance, the French National Theater is called La Comédie Française. No one is laughing here. It’s next to impossible to translate the name well. Maybe you can call it The French Dramatic Theater, or something like that, but it still lacks the oomph of the original. In biographies or obituaries you read that one of its members was a great comédien or comédienne. The words can best be rendered as “classical actor” or “classical actress”.

So now what about La Divina Commedia? What about The Divine Epic? The Divine Chronicle? The Divine Saga? The Divine Story? These are clumsy, and we are stuck with the standard name The Divine Comedy, misleading as it is in English, but we can still try.

A strange thing happened to the three parts of the work. The second and third parts, Purgatorio and Paradiso, are filled with—as I am informed—“theological nicities” and require “patience and scholarship”. That’s a fancy way of saying no one reads them. But apparently in Inferno, the vision of Hell is vivid, and this first part has taken on a life of its own, almost as a separate work. As such, it goes under the name Dante’s Inferno.

People perceive those two words as the title of the work, which is not the case. Not even quotes are used as in: Dante’s “Inferno”. But I don’t see that as the problem.

We do use the word “inferno” in English to describe a great fire, a conflagration. We like to attach “roaring” to it, as well. But after all, it just means “fire”. “Inferno” is the Italian word for “Hell”, just as Spanish uses “Infierno”. The name of the work in English should be: Dante’s “Hell”, but no, we’re stuck with “Dante’s Inferno”, which means, the mistranslations continue, and become standardized. Oh, well.

Calling the viewpoint in Death Valley Dante’s View is of course an implicit reference to his Inferno. Now, having seen the viewpoint, and knowing what a beautiful place it, and the whole basin is, the only apparent connection between Death Valley and Dante’s vision of Hell is high temperature, and absolutely nothing else. Yet, for the fun of it, let’s stick with the allusion.

I have no interest or ability to delve into Dante’s Inferno/Dante’s “Hell”, except for what is probably the most famous line of Dante’s there is. Arriving at, and passing through, the Gates of Hell, he sees inscribed on it:

Here’s the pronunciation. As ever, I is as in SKI, E as in CAFÉ:

This is the line we’re going to work with, along with its translation. Actually, I should say translations, because it’s a VERY famous line, and there are many translations, but that’s just the point I’ve been making recently about translations. Checking with Wikipedia, I find no fewer than thirteen. I’m going to list them all, but the first two are by people whose names I recognize, so I’ll list them separately. The first is by none other than Henry Wadsworth Longfellow from 1882:

The second is from 1949, and is by Dorothy Sayers, who I know for her mystery novels with the character Lord Peter Wimsey. But now I read that she was a translator and student of classical and modern languages, and apparently she considered her translation of La Divina Commedia to be her finest work. She said:

Here are the others that Wikipedia listed:

I said it was a famous line, didn’t I? And everybody wants to get into the act with his or her own translation. With all due respect to all the work presumably done by all these people on the rest of the Commedia, and just limiting ourselves to the line above, I don’t fully agree with any single translation. Some have changed around the word order, others have added words not in the original. Extra words could be necessary, but one should try to avoid them. Let me demonstrate the situation as I see it. It’s easiest working from the end.

1) ch’entrate I’d say “who enter”. I see no reason to add words like “in”, “here”, or “this place”. Sayers says “go in”, but why, when we have the word “enter” just like the Italian? And why “by me”? I also don’t see any reason to use “that” when “who” works so well.

2) voi Here I see a choice of three reasonable possibilities. English no longer makes a distinction between “you” for one person and “you” for many, and here we need to translate the plural form. Sometimes, to make it clear we’re speaking to several, we say things like “you people”, “you folks”, “all you”. Here are the valid possibilities I see, in reverse order of how I like them. You can just say “you” and not worry about the nicities of it meaning one or many. You can go archaic and say “ye”, which is definitely plural, since Dante wrote in the time when that word was common in English. Or, my choice, you can say “all you”.

3) ogni speranza Speranza is “hope”—no problem—but ogni means “each, every”. If Dante had wanted to say “all hope” he would have said “tutta speranza”, and he didn’t. You may see a philosophic difference. “All hope” treats hope as a mass quantity. “Every hope” implies many little hopes. The latter is what Dante said, and I think losing many hopes is the more devestating situation.

4) lasciate I don’t know why most translators have gotten on the “abandon” bandwagon. It’s again a matter of the co-pilot overpowering the pilot. If Dante had meant abandon, he would have said “abbandonate”, and once again, he didn’t. Lasciate basically means “leave”, not in the sence of departing—that would have been “partite”-- but in the sense of leaving behind, like leaving your keys (behind) on the table. This is the rare situation I’d add a word, since adding “behind” further clarifies: “leave behind”.

Let’s repeat the original, plus the translation I feel is most faithful to it and to Dante:

There is, by pure and utter coincidence, and added advantage to this translation. The original doesn’t have any particular stress pattern, but by chance, this translation ends up being in the pleasantly rhythmic iambic pentameter:

[Quick review: an iamb is two syllables in the rhythm da.DUM. The word be.GIN is in iambic form. Set up a meter (rhythm) of five iambs, and you have iambic pentameter, which is a nice-sounding traditional form. A left-over syllable at the end is NOT considered bad form.]

Leaving Dante’s View and Death Valley, I immediately crossed back from California into Nevada, headed finally for Las Vegas for four nights. Approaching the city of gamblers, I thought I saw—was it a mirage?—was that a sign spanning the highway? What did it say? Could it have been “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.”?

Just kidding.