Bug Bites

The bug, if not well fed, is at least being encouraged. And if not Shangri-La on the horizon, there are a few possibilities: Chicago, Death Valley, Europe--maybe in that order of occurrence if not order of possibility. Of these, Death Valley is the most intriguing (and most definite, for that matter), for it is not yet on my list of places seen, places traveled. So, and perhaps because I've recently written a short story titled "The Map-Reader" and have been in a map-reading frame of mind, I thought it would be good to actually figure out where Death Valley is. What I found is, it's a long way from home.

The drive, from here, would require a few hours of driving east, many hours of driving south, and more hours of driving east. Which reminds me: the first poem I had published was titled "Heading East," but for the life of me I don't know if I've got a copy of it. This was before computers were household products and could save everything electronically, when I wrote first in long hand, then transferred to a typewriter, but years after I actually learned to type on an old Underwood in the solitude of my bedroom, and also years after I took a typing class in high school and managed to talk my teacher into giving me an "A" so I'd have a 3.0 GPA, which in turn would reduce the amount of money I had to pay for car insurance. If not for PE and typing, who knows where I would have ended up when it came to grades....

Back to Death Valley, which is on this fuzzy map.



And, according to my World Book Encyclopedia (1970 edition), was given its name by a "group of pioneers after they crossed it in 1849. They call it Death Valley because of the desolate desert environment." Which, to me, doesn't sound so original. The World Book again: "Death Valley is a deep trough, about 130 miles long and from 6 to 14 miles wide." And this: "Mining towns sprang up...with such names as Bullfrog, Greenwater, Rhyolite, and Skidoo. The towns died when the ores were exhausted. Today, only cluttered debris remains."

I like that: "only cluttered debris remains." Of course, nearly 4 decades after that was published, I wonder if any debris remains, or if it does, whether not it has remained cluttered.

Such road trips to such places are good for all of us, and Mapquest says that the distance from my house to Death Valley is about 455 miles following a route that might look like this:


And there are places to stop along the way: Mono Lake and the bookstore in Lee Vining; Mammoth Lakes; Bishop. Once, stopping in Mammoth Lakes on the way to a backpacking trip, my friend Tom bought 24 dozen doughnuts and ate them over a 5-day period. Okay, not quite 24 dozen, but a lot. Must've been good doughnuts.

This will not be a solo trip. Rather, Kominski, with some kind of snakes on the mind, perhaps, envisions grand mountains and deep chasms of.... what? Literary material, perhaps, the kind a person can store up for some time before needing it.