Opinion: Desert hikes are stunning, thanks to invisible waterways
I know a lot of people think of deserts as big, empty, lifeless wastelands — that’s one of the reasons it can be tough to get folks to care about protecting them. But when I moved to Southern California from New England, my desert enchantment was immediate and deep. One of the things that struck me most about exploring the deserts here was that the slower I went, the more I saw. … Take the Amargosa River, which flows for 185 miles and drains a 5,500-square-mile basin in Nevada and California before feeding the aquifer remnants of ancient Lake Manly in Death Valley. It’s the seventh-longest river in California, but you could be forgiven for not noticing it, since it spends almost all its time underground. Its water provides habitat for the improbable Devil’s Hole pupfish …
-Written by Casey Schreiner, a writer, producer, presenter and author who has taken over The Wild newsletter for the next few months.