As he John-Wayned over to talk to my brother, I saw that the Ranger had a nine millimeter pistol in his holster, with an extra ammo clip in his belt. Must be dangerous work keeping the tourists in line these days. "We figgered you folks probably don't know where you're going," the Ranger said.
He and his buddy had come careening around the corner in their white pickup and slid to a stop on the gravel road, motioning us to stop. I wanted to tell him "Don't assume we're stupid until we prove it." We told him our planned destination.
"There's no camping on this road, not for the next 33 miles."
"Yes, we know. We're going past the sliding rocks area to camp."
"Well, I guess you could camp at the Homestake Mine, but the road is rough, doesn't get any better than it is here, maybe worse." He smiled. "It's gonna get very cold up there tonight, and it's almost dark now."
We were almost scared. Dark and cold. My brother, Leland, and I have winter camped in Idaho and Utah and have found our way down pathless mountains in the dark. We figured our chances of survival were good.
The Ranger let us pass, obviously against his better judgement. The road was the worst washboard I'd ever seen. It is reasonably straight and climbs gently towards the mountains. A two wheel drive car can negotiate it. But for 33 miles the gravel road is sheer torture for travelers. with washboards ten inches high.
You could tell that it was bloody hot most of the time, but in late November, at about 4000 feet elevation, we felt the full sting of bitter winter winds. One miner's bunkhouse with the roof gone, framed the sunset with glassless windows and empty door frames set in native stone. As Leland photographed the bunkhouse we listened to the creaks, moans and whistles that the main mining shaft apparatus gave off in the rising wind. The aging wood, tin and iron was not long for this world and already sounded like it had one foot in the first circle of hell.
"... a ceaseless flail
That churns and frenzies that dark and timeless air
Like sand in a whirlwind." —Canto III
The Racetrack is a dry lake bed, a playa, about 3 miles long and almost as wide, a long oval shape completely surrounded by mountains. None of the mountains have much growing on them, so they are a frame of pure shape, color and form. The lake bed itself is uniformly cracked, like fancy tile work, and very flat in all directions.
It is crisscrossed by the bizarre tracks of large rocks from nearby dolomitic limestone cliffs. Once the rocks make it onto the dry lake bed, they start a decades-long amusement park ride over the surface. Whenever conditions are right (70 mile per hour winds, rain or ice) the rocks slide over the ancient mud, compressing but not erasing the tiles, and leaving a slightly smeared track in their wake...
