DEATH VALLEY DAYS

Vultures cut lazy circles in the sky above me, patiently awaiting my certain demise. Dropping my gaze, I could see the heat shimmering off the mountainside. It was well over one hundred degrees and the last of the water was long gone. I was close to forty miles from the nearest road and the situation looked bleaker than the late dinner seating on the Titanic.

What did this potentially life-threatening situation have to do with Curiosity on Mars?

Then the image of Lawren Markle, the dapper (and sweatless, in stark contrast to my drenched shirt) PR rep from Caltech, swam into focus before my parched and crispy eyes.

"You doing OK?" he said with a look of genuine and entirely reasonable concern, given my condition. "Sure," I croaked. "I'm ... good...." It was then that the death fantasy evaporated and I was back in an equally grim state—atop a barren, rocky peak in Death Valley with a group of science journalists and our Edmund Hillary—esque geological guide, Caltech's Dr. John Grotzinger.

I looked from Grotzinger, who was holding forth on a geological premise that was not quite soaking in, to Lawren, who had refocused his attention to Grotzinger, where it belonged. Having Grotzinger as our tour guide in this garden spot of Death Valley was a true privilege. If I survived it, I would be very grateful in a week or so, once I was able to rehydrate.

Reality hit: we were probably a mile from the road, it was about eighty-four degrees, and we had been hiking for about twenty minutes. I was wiped out. This was not promising to be my best day.

The invitation I received in my e-mail a week before had sounded exciting and bore the return address of Caltech. I was invited to join Dr. John Grotzinger, mission scientist (a.k.a. Big Kahuna) for the Mars Science Laboratory, as he hosted a two-day press junket into Death Valley to discuss some of the formations that informed earthbound geologists about what they might find on parts of Mars. It all looked like good fun, and there would be only a handful of us, maybe twelve science writers. I would be the sole outside video guy; JPL's John Beck-Hoffman would shoot for their media operation.

At the end of the note was added, "Wear sturdy shoes, as we will do a bit of walking." Oddly, I missed the hidden meaning even though I had taken a string of geology classes in college. I should have remembered that this was geologist's code for "wear steel-toed boots, as we are likely to run into rattlers and possibly even desert snarks as we hike over hill and dale looking for the perfect Precambrian outcrop" ... or in this case, as we hike about twelve miles, mostly vertical, in the hottest and driest place in the continental United States.

What may have thrown me off was that Grotzinger is not the old-breed of geologist I knew from my increasingly distant college days. He wore no suspenders, no plaid flannel shirt, and did not smoke a pipe. He had no gold-miner's belly hanging over a turquoise-buckled beltline. He is, in fact, tall, slim, irritatingly fit, and tan. His weathered good looks would be welcomed into the Explorer's Club. While his explanations can be challenging to follow, he is patient and graceful with the laypeople. He can be folksy and technical in the same sentence, so clearly the geologist's pedigree was there.

We traversed many roads and junctions on our way into the high desert, and the map showed many nearby avenues with such charming (and informative) names like Talc Road, Sulfate Road, and Cactus Flats Road. A few hours out of LA, we reached our destination: Shoshone, California, with a population of thirty-one. Our group almost doubled it.

As we checked in at the cinder-block penitentiary that was to serve as our motel for the night, an optimistically named "inn," Grotzinger wandered over to one of the hulking, chalk-white Caltech SUVs that had transported us there. By the time I got my camera equipment and other packings stowed in the room, he was completing elaborate dry-marker murals on the rear passenger-side door of one of these overwrought grocery haulers. Big murals. Murals of complicated rock bedding, uplift, and other geological delights. And on the front door, he had drawn surprisingly artistic renderings of very steep Alpine-looking mountains, which I hoped were metaphorical. As I watched, and thought back to my own college geology field trips, I wondered if any of his compatriots had ever swapped out a permanent marker in the SUV drawing kit just for laughs. I know I would have. "Ha ha, that was funny. Here's the turpentine ... oh, that takes off the car's paint too, now doesn't it ..."

As we waited for the formal talk to begin, a three-foot-long and very red snake worked its way across the roadway and for some reason (probably seeking the same relieving shade that I would soon pine for) decided to work its way through the spokes of the truck's wheel. Our group tittered nervously. Most of us were now regretting the light athletic shoes we had chosen to wear.

We moved to a fire ring nearby (why a fire ring in Death Valley, you might ask? To keep the sidewinders and rabid coyotes away at night, of course), and Grotzinger began discussing the day ahead. I missed most of it because I don't shoot video out on location all that often and was fiddling with my camera gear and cleaning the sand off the parts I had already dropped twice. But I had it running by the time he got to the most immediately relevant part of the talk, moving back to the mural on the Suburban. "Then well end up at this formation, here in the foothills. It's the Glimmenshorp Finkleheimer formation of preglandular hermphratite ..." (this was not exactly what was said, but it's how it registered in my overheated brain).

I was still rolling video, so I meekly asked, "John, for my audience would you mind giving me the eighth-grade, Weekly Reader version of the story?" He paused for a moment, looking at the ground. I thought perhaps I had committed some kind of faux pas, but I think he was merely gathering his...