down we went into the maze
Carrizo Creek / Canyon sin nombre, looking east. December 1990.
same vicinity as shown in here was our water.
“Every quarter-mile brought some novelty to light... Stumbling over lumps of some brittle material, I found that they were compact clods of oyster shells (we were a few hundred feet above sea-level).It was a region to charm the geologist, though not the botanist. A few wretched creosotes and ocotillos alone held on to life, shrivelled, leafless, and half ossified...”
“Before us stretched a tangle of gullies and washes, braided together like one’s interlaced fingers... Down we went into the maze.”
ex J. Smeaton Chase (1864-1923 *), California Desert Trails (1919) : 276 (Stanford copy)
tags: Carrizo Creek; deserts; sea level; water; J. Smeaton Chase, California Desert Trails (1919)