Dante's View, Death Valley, CA
Perched a mile above The Valley,
With a view so transcendent.
A name inspired by a timeless epic,
A perspective commensurate.
Salt flats stretching into oblivion,
Their ghostly tendrils grasping at the limit of imagination,
What Dante sought is here.
The Panamints & Amargosas can only hope to contain it,
Sublimity boundless and infinite by its very nature.
Telescope peak is cast as a wary sentinel,
Over this land of incomparable mystique,
Over souls both lost and found,
Over dreamers, seekers, and the few who romanticize this section of parched earth,
Over the many who have depended upon it for generations.
Come forth and venture through the winding route,
Leading to a spectacle of creation.
Gaze upon a land of unbridled aridity,
And yet shaped by floods both violent and instantaneous.
Death Valley is full of contradictions.
Life flourishes where it is given a chance to spring forth,
In canyons seemingly desolate,
In a cavity of the Earth whose depths only the Devil knows.
All seen from from a vantage point fit for a prophet,
Speaking aloud the wisdom of the desert.
The monsoon clouds gather overhead,
Spurring visions of a basin once filled by an ancient lake.
A lot has happened since then.
The land is always becoming.
This is not so apparent,
To the momentary observer.
A snapshot of history,
Only the Angels bear true witness,
To a landscape immemorial.
A geography beyond mortal comprehension,
Is revealed from a vantage point,
Fit for the divine.
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