The westward course of bathtub rings (Potash, Utah)

Where does salt come from? And how can I never have wondered that before? The bathtub ring of Lake Mead and the westward course of empire should have got me thinking about this sooner.

Cathedral Gorgeous

Q. What if nature played water games in a clayey old lake bed for thousands of years?
A. Cathedral Gorge State Park.


The old lake sediment must be exactly the perfect consistency - soft enough to cut through, sticky enough to hold its shape. Runaway runoff has carved and is carving an astounding succession of crannies, caves, niches and slots into the previously solid accumulation of ancient lake sediment. If you've ever seen Bryce Canyon, with its hoodoos, or Cedar Breaks, both formed by wind erosion and repeated freeze-thaw cycles on sandstone, the similarity is striking.





But the scale is completely different. The shapes recall Hindu carved walls, classical columns, nesting ledges of a thousand birds, and you can reach out and touch them, practically hold them in your hand.













The upper surface is no more than 50 feet above, much less in most places. The close quarters lead to amazing keyholes of sky and effects of sunlight filtering down over the intricate surfaces. And, much photography.

The Grand Canyon kind of does your head in but is hard to intimately connect with, whereas Zion rears above you, you're among it, literally inside it, and it is more humanly touching because your brain can comprehend the scope.


In the same way, some slots in Cathedral Gorge are too small to get through, and we were brushed either side with dirt by the time we came out - but the smaller scale, if anything, made us even more wide-eyed with wonder. (Yeah, even the teen. Fist pump! We casually - nah the truth is we pointedly - mentioned that we do stuff this cool practically every time we go away. The education continues.)

Also, it was fairly warm out there (112/44) but in among the crevices there were constant out-sighings of cool air. How can that be? And even knowing how, I shake my head. It does not seem any less amazing.

CCC water tower

The site is adorned by a few old CCC buildings: a ramada, a water tower and a very charming outhouse that is no longer accepting donations (there's one of those at Kershaw-Ryan, too) - and there is camping there too, perhaps for a cooler season.







And they had the best mud ever. I have seen mud dried into curved tiles before. This is the first time I've ever seen it curled into a fringe.

Miller Point overlook

Across the highway from the park entrance is the ghost town of Bullionville - for next time. (We were already saying 'next time' by then.) For now, we turned north on 93 towards Pioche, stopping at the Miller Point Overlook to see Cathedral Gorge from above.

Itinerary

Saturday: 317 to Caliente, turn northeast on 93. Through Panaca junction, to Cathedral Gorge State Park ...

The smell of wet desert

Bike ride on Sunday at Clark County Wetlands Park. The trail crosses and follows the Las Vegas Wash, which drains the Las Vegas valley. Mostly that's not much of a job, except when it's a huge one. It never stops rains here but it pours. This region gets most of its rain as thunderstorms, and the rain runs straight off the parched, mineralised land, causing flash floods. The amount of water-management infrastructure in this desert city is perplexing until you've been in a summer storm here.

This park is downstream of a 'reclamation facility', so the jade coloured water, rich with fish and bird life, is 'reclaimed urban water, not fit for human contact.'

(Euphemism: level 'master')

Okay, so no swimming.

The trail is a fairly new paved path that twines around in gentle swoops and dips through low rises of sediment and conglomerate. There's a lot of creosote growing alongside the higher parts of the trail. (By the water, rushes and occasional stands of trees. We saw a white heron.) They've done a lot of planting - we were bemused to see irrigation systems all over the place.

And because there was all this creosote and all this water, there was the smell of wet creosote, which is to me the smell of wet desert. It's how this land smells during and after rain, and on damp mornings and evenings, even in those rare places where there doesn't seem to be any creosote nearby. It's hard to describe, but sort of like if dogs designed a pee-scented cologne? Not in a terrible way ... medicinal and peculiar, pungent and distinctive, and weirdly organic and alive.

And because it's a smell, and smells drill a core straight to the cerebral cortex, I will always remember the first time I smelled this. It was in the Lost City Museum at Overton, and I had no idea what it was, but the whole adobe building was redolent with it. (The small but wonderful Lost City museum houses the rescued remains of the Pueblo Grande de Nevada, 25 miles of Ancestral (Anasazi) Pueblo dwellings and structures, much of which was drowned by Lake Mead in the 30s (I wonder whether, like the ghost town of St Thomas, the receding waters have left anything to see? Overton Beach is now over 20 miles from the shore of Lake Mead. I have the 2014 and 2015 versions of the Lake Mead NRA official maps - their shorelines are noticeably different from one another.))

The next time I smelled wet desert, it was nearly a year later, on a day after rain - actually not far from the wetlands, downstream on the path to Lake Las Vegas. We had cycled out to have a look, the day being only 32 degrees or so (low 90s, Fahrenheiters), though the air was hanging heavier and moister than usual. This time I understood approximately what it was, because it was everywhere ... because creosote is everywhere here. Mind you, I didn't yet know what creosote was.

Creosote has little leaves shaped sort of like thyme, and stylish golden yellow flowers, and - to me, most strikingly, amazing little fuzzball seeds. Why wasn't everyone talking about this plant with the fuzzball seeds? It was everywhere.

When I finally understood, I felt like a bit of a muppet (again.) (Also did that just now as I realised it's also the same thing as greasewood. Gah there is so much to learn!)

And weirdly, two of the signature plants of this kind of desert, sagebrush and creosote, both have species names 'tridentata'. Coincidence? Hmmmm.

Book Review: Cadillac Desert

Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
Revised Edition 1993
by Marc Reisner

Metaphorically, water rights are a pretty dry subject. (Yeah, sorry. Couldn't help it. #sorrynotsorry) How did he manage to make it so exciting? And at the same time, so depressing ... I found it hard to put this down. The next story of ludicrous corruption, pork-barrel politics, gross myopia, or all the above, was always just round the corner. There were a few rays of hope, too, and some stories of endurance, cleverness, wisdom in the face of stupidity, and serendipitous saves from apparently certain disaster.

Reading this gave me a whole new depth of understanding, not just of water issues in the American southwest, but of human settlement in the region, and American government in execution. All that's missing is something to act as a sequel - this was revised in the early 90s. I'm on the hunt!

So as it turns out, it was not such a bad thing that my plantar fasciitis flared up so badly and I had to miss the walk to Emerald Pools with Simon and our dear friends from Canada. Instead, bought this and read the first few chapters in the lovely lobby of Zion Lodge.

Affiliate link disclosure: no, it's not. I won't make anything if you click the link above to buy it. Hmm maybe I should ...