Feeling the burn in Death Valley

America's hot spot: The reason many come is the reason many don't.

By Todd Richissin | Contributor to The Christian Science Monitor

from the August 1, 2007 edition

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Death Valley, Calif. - D. J. Haynes knows a hot that not many people in the world will ever know. His is a slap-in-the-face hot, an up-the-shorts hot, a down-the-shirt hot – a hot that burns sweat so quickly people don't know it's pouring out of them. It's a deadly hot.

It also may be the only hot in the world so brutal it has become a tourist attraction, a place people visit for how it feels as much as how it looks.

For nine scorching years, Mr. Haynes has lived and worked with this heat in Death Valley National Park, one of the hottest places on earth many days of the year, and the absolute hottest place in the world on others.

Death Valley is hotter, drier, and lower than anywhere in North America. On July 10, 1913, the temperature here hit 134 degrees F., making it the hottest day recorded anywhere, ever. Since then, only the Sahara Desert has been hotter, by 2 degrees, in 1922, according to most records. Even the average low temperature here in July and August is nearly 90.

Home and office for Haynes, a souvenir and grocery store manager, are on opposite sides of California's Highway 190, near the main entrance and exit of the park. The air on his commute to work and home these days regularly soars to more than 120 degrees – the average for August is 113, a reprieve from July's 115 average.

To Haynes, and to many visitors, though, this place is about more than heat.

"I've been here long enough to know what this place really is," says Haynes. "It's not a valley of death. It's a valley of life. It's a living lady you fear at first because you know she can kill you.... And then you see all the life here and you appreciate it more and respect it more."

Or, as Death Valley ranger Terry Baldino puts it: "The heat attracts some people here, but when they get here, that's not why they go, 'Wow!' "

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Visitors discover that the 140-mile long valley is many different places, not all of which they anticipated. Death Valley, in fact, is neither strictly a valley nor a place of absolute death. It is a quilt of extremes. Strands of scorched blacks weave with slabs of glittering whites. Disorderly splotches of dead green shrubs contrast with sand dunes, randomly placed but immaculately combed. Whole areas of monochrome are bordered by mountains in various hues of black, purple, and green.

"We could not say we decided to come for exactly this reason and this reason, but it was more than the heat," says Wendy Bastiansen, who traveled here last month from Antwerp, Belgium, with her husband for a second honeymoon, of all things. They brought 10 other family members with them. "Sometimes you just know you want to go somewhere, but there is no real reason except you have this feeling that it's a place you would like to go. Maybe you are wrong. Now I see it, and it's like I know where I am – I am in Death Valley – but I also feel like I am somewhere that's not real."

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