The next morning, I packed up and started walking without bothering with coffee or breakfast. I was only 3 miles from my car, and 8 miles from there to the Burro Bend Cafe in Ocotillo Wells on Highway 78. On the other side of the mountains I could hear the vehicles of workers driving to work at the gypsum mine. I packed up and moved on.
To the west, the light-colored gypsum-bed stripes of the Fish Creek Mountains came into view. These stripes, landmarks which mark the Fish Creek Mountains to eastbound travelers, got here millions of years ago when the mountains rose. Paul Remeika and Lowell Lindsay tell us: "The arrangement of rock here is like no other, representing reddish-colored braided stream deposits and thick boulder fanglomerate deposits. Most of the colorful stripes in the canyon walls belong to the Split Mountain Formation. This unique setting was several million years in the making, recording the rejuvenation of the Borregan landscape during the Miocene Epoch."
The Split Mountain divide was, as it always is, especially beautiful in the soft light of early morning when the sun first touches the canyon walls. The sun and I had the whole place to ourselves, just about. As I neared the wash leading to the Salton Sea, I noticed some lovely pink flowers on a desert willow and went over to smell them. I heard bees, and saw a couple of male hummingbirds chasing one another. As I sniffed at a flower, one of the birds buzzed close to me, apparently to let me know that this tree belonged to him, and I had better be careful. I assured him he had nothing to fear from me, and moved on.
Back To Fish Creek Walk
