Gil and Jenny are scheduled to survey a known fault line in the Death Valley area. Accompanied by a Park Service employee, the set up camp and then go to visit the Lost Burro Mine. Gil, who in familiar with the area, has a surprise for his wife. Nature has bigger surprise for them both.

The climb was quite easy, as the crest was low and the slope wasn’t too steep. They were also hiking due west, into the shadow of the ridge. They carried an ice chest between them, and Gil also toted two small Byer of Maine folding camp stools. They came to the top, into sunlight coming level and orange in their eyes, and went to the far edge of the ridge. They put down the ice chest and set up the stools on the rocky crest. The shadows from the Last Chance Range to the west were growing longer, but the lingering impact of the desert light upon the Cottonwood Mountains reflected, even seemed to bend, the light into the valley at their feet, which then flowed into the Racetrack Playa to their left.

“Beautiful,” said Jenny.

“Just wait.” Gil opened up the ice chest and extracted a cold picnic meal of sandwiches and Yukon Gold potato salad. They sat on the stools using the ice chest as a low table, then tapped together their water bottles and toasted the sunlight, the desert, themselves.

Jennie bowed her head and said a few words.

“Yes,” said Gil. “It is a place to give thanks.”

They ate, the sun dipped to the far ridge, and suddenly, the light began to fade, but the whole vista changed. The gray rocks and the white Racetrack seemed to become a black and white photo image of the desert, while irregularities in the Last Chance Range crest allowed narrow beams of the redding sun to searchlight the mountains here and there. The beams slowly rose to fly into space and twilight came in unutterable calm.

“Amazing,” whispered Jenny.

“Just a little more,” said Gil.

They watched together as the sky darkened. Jennie scooted her camp stool close to Gil’s and he reached out and pulled her close. As if they had closed a contact beyond their own, the stars began to switch on deep in the night. The profound dark became a star-field, then all was changed again as the full moon rose over the Cottonwoods behind them. There was no wash of color, but the stark lunar light etched into the watchers an image of angles, edges, and antiquity.

“I wish we had a camp all to ourselves,” said Jennie.

“There’s always the Mazda,” said Gil.

“You know how romantic I get when you’re unloading our surveying gear and sweeping dust off the seats.”

“There is that.”

They stowed their litter, folded up the camp stools, and carried the ice chest down to the SUV, moving carefully as the shadows were deep and the footing treacherous. They loaded the chest and chairs back into the Mazda. Before they left to go back down to pick up their Park chaperone and start their surveying, they sat together on the back of the vehicle. Their eyes, adjusted to the moonglow, could easily see the dilapidated buildings that seemed to shed old dreams into the night.

Jenny said: “Casablanca would have been a totally different film if Rick had said, ‘We’ll always have the Lost Burro Mine’.”

“Oh, yeh. And imagine Louis saying ‘Round up the usual stray donkeys’.”

Jennie stood up and looked toward the head frame with its impressive set of stone retaining walls. “I wonder,” she asked, “how many Lost Burro Mines there are?”

“Probably not too many, but I wish I had a five-spot for every discovery out here that some prospector said was found as he was chasing down a burro and just happened to stumble on pay dirt.”

“I wonder if I could get a shot of that cabin by moonlight,” said Jenny.

“Why not? Camera’s on the back seat, your side.”

Jenny went around the back, patting Gil on his knee as she went by. She threaded the narrow space between the Mazda and the steep edge of the terrace and was about to open the door when an odd sound reached their ears.

Jenny stopped and looked up. “Night flight?” she asked.

It was a deep rumble, and it moved. Toward them. Suddenly, dust rose as the Big One hit.

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