THE SOUND OF SILENCE

Six miles of washboard road and a thousand foot of altitude decline and we finally reach the drastically retreated, by a 100+ foot, water line of Reservoir Mead, aka, Lake Mead. The view is alarming, appalling and yet calming, comely and comfortingly encompassing. The fake-lake’s retaining walls are gradual sloping multicolored mountains and has what looks like a bright candy stripe across the horizontal of its face. Sweet-it-ain’t. The line shows the one-time high-water point and is no more than a salinity crust at 120 ft. above the reservoir’s ripples; It remains a giant, scum-white ring, not much unlike a dirty bathtub.  Edward Abbey, (“The Monkey Wrench Gang,” guy) chuckling from his grave, must be saying, “It wasn’t wise trying to fool Mother Nature.”

Silence, so pure the only sound is the ringing in my ears.

Not a soul to be seen, unless you count wild horses, rabbits, birds, lizards and burros as soul bearing. The view is clean and clear for 20 miles on three horizons.  Turn your gaze and you be rewarded with the snow capped Mormon Mountains standing 50 miles to the north, peaks stretching majestically 7,000 foot into an afternoon azure sky.

We leveled the rig on a rare, somewhat flat plain, extended the slide-out and were generally giving our selves congratulatory pats-on-the-back for enduring the long rig-rattling ride-in to find such a peaceful, people-less solitude when along bounces a huge tired, high-rise jeep, packed to it’s overflowing gills with camping supplies. I wanted to feel that “my” space had been violated but this land is their land too. They were polite and parked next to the water about a half mile away.

Young male burros "Jacks" practicing for the time when they are old enough to fight for the pleasure to breed. 

Jacks and jennys scope-out the intruders.

BLACK TAILED JACK RABBIT

Rabbits in the desert are at the bottom of the carnivorous food chain so they must produce new frequently, and they do.  At three months old the female can breed (4 or 5 times a year) and the babies leave the nest at two weeks.

One speedy fellow, the ZEBRA TAILED lizard is abundant in number, most likely because it can zip out of sight quickly enough to stay clear of the raptor's talons.

Young invasive species, tamarisk, SALT CEDAR, consumes more water than surrounding vegetation and is the predominate plant introducing itself to the defiled, salt sediment land left by the declining waters of the reservoirs.

BARK SCORPION only 1 inch, but potentially lethal.

Young kids, nice enough, but left their "brights" at home.  Jackie and I took our shovel over to dig them out of the sand and put them back on the road.

GIANT BLUE-TAILED CENTIPEDE - 4 inches

Rollover enough rocks and you'll eventurally find little critters that prefer moist shade to the searing sun.  The bite is painful and will last a few hours to a couple of days but isn't considered life threatening