|
"Abandon all hope, all ye who enter."
-Dante Alighieri, The Devine Comedy
Vol.1: Inferno
"When the sun was fairly up I took
a good survey of the situation and it seemed as if pretty near all creation was in sight. There was a level plain, fully one-hundred
miles wide it seemed, and from anything I could see it would not afford a traveler a single drink in the whole distance or
give a poor ox many mouthfuls of grass."
Dante's View
June, 2004
"We were lost. The clear nights and
days furnished us with the means of telling the points of a compass... but not a sign of life in Nature's wide domain had
been seen for a month or more."
Zabriskie Point
June, 2004
"The home of the poorest man on Earth
was preferable to this place. Wealth was of no value here. A hoard of twenty dollar gold pieces could now stand before us
the whole day long with no temptation to touch a single coin, for its very weight would only drag us nearer to death."
The Devil's Playground
March, 2005
"One fellow said he knew this place.
It was the Creator's dumping place - where He had left the worthless dregs after making the world... where Lot's wife
had been turned to a pillar of salt and scattered around this country."
Jayhawker's Pass
March, 2005
"As my road was now out and away from
the mountains, and level, I walked on with eyes downcast, thinking over the situation. If I were alone... I would be out before
any other man. But with women and children in the party, to go and leave them would be to pile everlasting infamy upon my
head. The thought almost made me crazy but I thought it would be better to stay and die with them, bravely struggling to escape
than to foresake them in their weakness."
Badwater
March, 2005
"As I reached the lower part of the
valley I walked over what seemed to be boulders of various sizes. The tops were covered with dirt and they looked like clear
ice."
Devil's Golf Course (Part II)
March, 2005
"But on closer inspection they proved to be immense blocks of salt rock while the
water that stood at their bases was the strongest brine."
Devil's Golf Course
March, 2005
"No one who has ever felt the
extreme of thirst can imagine the distress, the dispair, which it brings. I can find no word, no way to express it so that
others can understand."
Harmony
March, 2005
"Hunger swallows all feelings. A man
in a starving condition is a savage. He may be as blood-shed and selfish as a wild beast, as docile and gentle as a lamb or
as wild and crazed as a terrified animal, devoid of affection, reason or thought of justice."
Grave
March, 2005
"It was at this camp that Mr. Ischam
died. He came wandering into our camp and presented such an awful appearance, simply a skeleton of a once grand and powerful
man. He must have suffered untold agony... starving and alone with the knowledge that two of his companions had perished miserably
of starvation in that unknown wilderness of rocks and alkali."
-E. Coker, 1849
Last
Chance
March, 2004
"We approached the base of the mountain
in front of us, of what we had all along supposed to be a pass, and found, as we had lately begun to suspect, that
there was no pass that our wagons could be taken through, and they must be abandoned."
Devil's
Cornfield
June, 2004
"We killed all our oxen
and took the wood of our wagons and kindled fires to dry and smoke the flesh... We were to divide the provisions equally
and it was agreed thereafter that everyone must look out for himself and not expect help from anyone."
The
Dunes (Stovepipe Wells)
June, 2004
"Just as we were ready to leave...
we took off our hats, and then overlooking the scene of such trial, suffering and death and spoke the uppermost saying - "Goodbye
Death Valley"- then faced away..."
Cottonball
March, 2004
"Yonder, in gray mountain's beauty,
Wealth and fame decay.
Yonder, the sands of the desert,
Yonder, the seas of salt.
Yonder, a fiery furnace,
Yonder, the bones of our friends.
Yonder, the old and the young,
Lie scattered along the way."
-Unknown Jayhawker, 1849
|
