The Long-Ago Shamans of Death Valley: Vision Quests and Magical Rites

Death Valley is located in southern California, adjacent to the state line with Nevada, in the United States. Running roughly north-south, this remote valley is roughly 95 miles (153 km) long and 25 miles (40 km) wide. Its dramatic and tumbled rock strata reflect the vast ages of the Earth’s geological upheavals. The name of the place (apparently due to the deaths of ‘Forty-Niner’ gold prospectors there) may conjure a somewhat forbidding mental image, yet the actual visual impact is a vivid one, with rocks looking as if painted in reds, oranges, yellows, golds, and black, punctuated by scattered areas of white, glistening salt flats and mustard-yellow sand dunes, all fringed to east and west by purple-blue mountains. It is harsh and barren, but certainly colorful.

Zabriskie Point – an eastern entrance into Death Valley. (Photo: author)

Author Paul Devereux on the Death Valley salt flat known as ‘The Devil’s Golf Course’. (Photo: S. Devereux)