Last Friday, 13 assorted kids from Anne’s nature study class,
ages 6 to 14, accompanied by six assorted parents, ages
unspecified, drove down to Death Valley for a two-night field trip.
The older kids wore camouflage, which may have been disconcerting
to all the other people we met.
Last Friday, 13 assorted kids from Anne’s nature study class, ages 6 to 14, accompanied by six assorted parents, ages unspecified, drove down to Death Valley for a two-night field trip. The older kids wore camouflage, which may have been disconcerting to all the other people we met.
The kids had been studying deserts: rainfall or lack thereof, classifications of deserts, flora and fauna. They had written reports on desert animals. They had planted some cacti and eaten others. Now their hard work would be rewarded.
It took nine hours to drive from In-N-Out burger to Stovepipe Wells in the heart of Death Valley. At first inspection, the campground looked entirely unappealing: a dirt parking lot dotted with RVs, a line of tent sites on the far side, well removed from the bathrooms and the only water spigot.
But the kids came back from a brief exploration with glowing faces and an equally glowing report. “It’s really cool,” they said. “It just goes on forever with brush and little humps of ground and dry creek-beds. Please let us stay here.”
We overruled them, which was a mistake that cost us an extra hour in the car driving to Furnace Creek, which proved to be neither desert-like nor deserted enough to suit us. Back we drove, to set up tents in the dusk while Michele made us tortellini soup.
After dinner, we made s’mores, and recited poetry and read stories and told jokes around the campfire. Coyotes called in the night, and it rained. Most of us stayed dry.
The next morning, the soggy members of our expedition draped their sodden bedding over the creosote bushes. I made breakfast. Matthew found a dead scorpion near the bathroom. John carried it back to camp in his hat so we could all admire it. It revived. I put it in a jar.
Carol took the kids to Scotty’s Castle in the morning, to learn about the colorful fraud it is named for. After a sandwich lunch, we went to the dunes. Anne, Kenzie, and Amanda wanted to hike there, so I said I would accompany them. This displeased Anne, who, being my daughter, and 14, thinks I am old and fat and slow, but she had to put up with me, and the dog as well.
The dunes were two miles from camp, through creosote, along dry water courses. Death Valley has had so much rain this year that the sand was packed hard underfoot, very easy walking. I retied Kenzie’s laces for her, and shared my water, and Anne decided I wasn’t quite useless, albeit old and fat.
The girls were entranced by the places where the sandy dirt had hardened into a cracked mosaic of proto-sandstone. They pried up pieces and carried them along until they broke like New Year’s resolutions.
As we neared the dunes, Josiah and Anne used their walky-talkies to home us in. The wind was up. We climbed dune after dune, each one higher than the one before. At last, eyes slitted against the wind and scouring sand, we slogged up the ridgeline of the tallest dune in sight.
The wind whipped sand madly over the crest, pushing at our backs. In the trough below, we spied the adults, huddled under a creosote bush. I stepped over the edge and plowed down, with the dog, to join them. We watched the children scale and slide and tumble, until the westering sun told us it was time to return to camp.
The wind continued to rise, so after tinfoil dinners and songs and peach cobbler around the fire, we put all our gear into either tents or vehicles. Even so, the wind blew down John and Carol’s tent, forcing them to take refuge in her van. The next day, we hiked to Darwin Falls: streams of water in a desert canyon.
Homeschooling is such a misnomer. It conjures the image of a mother and some kids sitting around a kitchen table. But what single word could capture the magic of 13 kids and a dog glorying in the wind and sand and sky of a desert in January?
