cow creek

A break from the constant barrage of SoFoBoMo posts. I spent a bit of time this evening looking through the final day of shooting that I did in Death Valley. I'd woken up early that morning, with a vague plan to go back to the sand dunes near Stove Pipe Wells for a final sand shoot. I'd met a few people that I was going to shoot with and we all got together at 4:30am. The wind was howling. But they were all feeling hardy and still wanted to head to the dunes. So I wished them luck!

Instead I went with another group down towards the salt flats near Cow creek. I'd scouted that area on the Saturday when I'd arrived and found some really beautiful fan shapes in the salt. I'd walked out without my camera, towards the center of the valley on that first day, just to get away from everything and listen to the wind. The water and wind had blown rivulets into the salt pan and the shapes were achingly delicate. I'd hoped to come back when the light was good and marked some GPS co-ordinates so I could find it easily.

So on the last morning, I got my chance to go back and it was breathtaking all over again. Such graceful sweeping patterns leading off to the far mountains. The sand from the Stove Pipe Wells dune fields was filling the air in the distance, blowing down the valley and obscuring the hills but maybe adding some interesting mystery to the scene, too. The wind was whipping around my ears and it was a joy just to be up and out there to experience it.