I take off from March Field, Calif., head north and climb steeply. At
ten thousand feet on the altimeter I see the green fir trees skimming
only a couple of hundred feet beneath me. I see the deep snow between
their trunks, brilliant in the sun. I am clearing the San Bernardino
range.
I come out at ten thousand feet over the Mohave Desert, my altimeter
still reading ten thousand feet. The floor of the Mohave is high.
I look ahead to the railroad, thirty miles away. I look behind. The
green-sloped, snow-capped Bernardinoes form a backdrop for the desert
underneath.
On beyond the railroad, beyond Barstow, into the Granite Mountains, low,
rolling, black, barren, lava-formed.
Into the Painted Hills. They are not named that on the map. They are not
named at all, and at first I can't believe them. But there they are
beneath me. No atmospheric trick. No effect of distance. No subtle color
either. They are really painted. There is one over there. It sweeps out
of the desert upward into green and ends in a peak of white. There is
another, sweeping through purple to red. Others through red to yellow.
It is as if God had been playing with colored chalks, picking up purple,
perhaps, powdering it through his fingers to drop in a purple heap,
picking up another color then to drop on top of that in powdered
brilliance, powdering then on top of that another color still to form a
brilliant, pointed tip. Fantastic, unreal, true!
For a long time now I have seen no life. The brilliant land is barren. I
look back. I can still make out where the railroad runs. Far, far
behind, the white Bernardinoes rise, low on the horizon now in the
distance. It is not a long flight back to the railroad, or even a very
long one back to the mountains and over them into the green San
Bernardino Valley and March Field. But it is a long walk. It is a long
walk back even to the railroad. What if my motor quits? I had intended
to go on to Death Valley, just to see it, circle, and return.
I bank reluctantly around and assume a reverse compass course for home.
I have seen enough for an afternoon's jaunt, anyway.