(Note from Doni: Please meet Lauren Brooks, who’ll write a regular column especially for Food for Thought. Lauren and I met and became friends when we worked together at the Record Searchlight, where Lauren commuted to Redding from Chico to cover the Record Searchlight’s cops beat. She is a dedicated, gifted reporter and journalist. She was recently hired as the editor of the Chico Enterprise-Record’s weekly entertainment guide, The Buzz. Kindly join me in welcoming Lauren and her first Food for Thought column.)
I stuffed my hands in my jacket pockets as the wind blew my curly hair in all directions. Sand seeped into my boots as my boyfriend and I hiked across serene sand dunes in Death Valley National Park on the first day of April. The sun had yet to rise over the mountains.
My eyes scanned the vast desert and I smiled at its quiet, unspoiled beauty. Yellow wildflowers waved in the wind.
Those flowers were supposedly the reason for our trip. Richard, my boyfriend of four years, convinced me to travel to this hostile, barren land to see the spring wildflowers. Although my gardening skills are sorely lacking, I do love flowers.
I said yes.
He knew I would.
Richard and I drove for 10 hours from our apartment in Chico to the park’s centrally located Stove Pipe Wells Village, a reasonably priced motel that had its own restaurant, gas station, gift shop and general store.
By the way, temperatures were between the mid-70s to the mid-80s during the day – perfect wildflower-hunting weather.
Besides searching for flowers (and lizards!), our destinations included colorful canyons, the 2,000-year-old steam-created Ubehebe Crater, and the historic Scotty’s Castle, which once belonged to a lovable conman who had a knack for telling stories.
We also explored the Badwater Basin salt flat located 282 feet below sea level; the Devil’s Golf Course, a huge, flat land filled with knee-high mounds of crystallized salt; and the Race Track, a dry, flat lakebed where the wind allegedly pushes rocks after a bit of rainfall, which creates long trails in the cracked, sun-baked soil.
So many treasures reside in Death Valley, but the best treasure waited for me atop a sand dune on the first of April.
Richard, dressed in a red button-down shirt and black slacks, stood on the dune, his gaze shifting from the spot where the sun would rise over the mountains to my smile.
We spread a beach towel on the top of the dune and sat down to await the sunrise. The sun took its time. We didn’t mind.
We took pictures of each other and the gorgeous landscape.
As the sun came up, Richard set the camera’s self-timer and steadied it on a little tripod. I expected him to stand next to me – to get a picture of us in front of the sunrise.
Richard rarely does the expected. That’s one of the many things that I love about him. He got down on one knee, held out a sparkling ruby ring, and asked me to marry him.
Emotion flooded through me. My answer spilled forth, just before my tears.
I said yes.
He knew I would.
Lauren Brooks lives in Chico. She is the editor of the Chico Enterprise-Record weekly entertainment guide, The Buzz. She is a CSU, Chico alumna who graduated with a B.A. in journalism in spring 2006. She can be reached at lmbrooks.work@gmail.com.
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