Author’s note: To most appreciate this story, first read the previous blog about the place. Thanks!
Marcus learned of the lake from his kayaking buddy Gustavo. “A lake in Death Valley. How coois that? You gotta check it out.” Loading the five-pound inflatable he used on alpine lakes in the Sierras, Marcus drove to a remote corner of the valley. The view gave him goosebumps—naked mountains from the dawn of time rising over a mirror of iridescent hues. Preparations complete, he eased his kayak into foot-deep water and took off, skimming across the cracked lake bed that had been dry for thousands of years. Heat seared his nostrils, and the air smelled of brine. In a burst of joy, he stopped paddling, raised his fists in the air, and shouted, “Woo hoo!”
A strange ring of choppiness appeared in the center of the lake. Intrigued, Marcus paddled closer. Small whitecaps rippled around a dark circle, eight feet in diameter. Suddenly wary, he stopped paddling. The kayak continued to move forward. He jabbed his paddle into the ground as a brake, but the ground wasn’t there. His kayak entered the dark circle and plummeted downward at an astonishing speed. His head spun, and he didn’t know if he was breathing water or air, or breathing at all.
As suddenly as the descent had begun, it stopped. Marcus’s head cleared, and he looked around. He was sitting in his kayak, paddle in hand, in the center of a lake. But this was not the lake he had been on earlier. Its water reflected the dark blue of an unfathomable depth. In the distance, waves lapped on a shore rimmed by lush forest. Birds flew overhead. The temperature felt like that of a late fall day. Miles away, sheets of rain angled from stormy clouds to the lake. A gust of wind rocked his small kayak, and his teeth chattered. His shorts and tank top gave him no protection from the chill. He had no choice but to paddle to the closest shore.
There he found himself in a land as abundant as Death Valley was barren. Small animals skittered through the woods and nearby meadows, schools of fish populated the lake, and at dawn the birds were so numerous they darkened the sky overhead. But he had no implements of any sort to hunt or fish or start a fire, not even a receptacle to hold water from a nearby stream. The few edible berries and vegetables he found did little to appease his hunger, and he would have died if a small band of people hadn’t appeared on the lakeshore in a large raft of logs hewn together with vine ropes.
Short and wiry, with jaggedly cut straight dark hair, the people—perhaps ancient ancestors of the present-day Timbisha Shoshones, who still lived in Death Valley—wore simple clothes of hides and loosely woven fibers. The men formed a circle around him, pulled at his tank top and poked his kayak, commenting in sounds he couldn’t understand. But they smiled as they spoke and didn’t harm him. He seemed to be accepted as part of the landscape. The families—there were two of them—camped next to him, sharing food and wooden tools and teaching him how to hunt and fish. They gave him blankets and shawls to protect against the nighttime chill. In short, they saved his life.
For several months, Marcus lived on the lakeshore as the two families came and went in their raft. One morning, one of the young girls pointed to the center of the lake. Small whitecaps formed a choppy ring around a dark circle. Stunned, Marcus dashed to his kayak, turned briefly to thank the people with a bow and a hand over his heart, then paddled furiously toward the circle. To his horror, it began to fade. He stroked until his lungs were close to burst, reaching the center of the ring in time to be sucked downward again. His head spun, and everything went black.
When he regained consciousness, he was in a white room wearing a white hospital gown. Doctors and nurses stood around him with wide eyes and relieved faces. Once they realized he was well enough to speak, they plied him with variations of the same question: “What were you doing alone and unprotected on Badwater Basin in hundred-degree weather?” “With a kayak, no less.”
As he told his story, their eyes got wider. “A lake? There hasn’t been a lake in Death Valley for ten thousand years.”
Exhausted, he fell back on his bed. The doctors spoke in whispers, stressing words like “heatstroke” and “hallucinations.”
He knew better.
