The distances are inestimable. We are driving on a gravel road, 75 miles long between pavement, along the length of a craggy, snow-covered range of mountain. It looks like we could set foot off the road, and be on the ridgeline in a couple of hours. In reality, we’re looking at a mile of vertical relief. There is no reference in the landscape for scale, no building, no tree, only sage-covered alluvial fans and foothills, in rare springtime green hue.

The next range to the south, it is probably 40 miles distant. The mountains beyond that, 80 miles. The sky, it goes without saying, is huge. But under our feet are boiling pots of mud. Steam vents, hot pools, and water at boiling temperature hiss from the rock around us. The soil is a fluffy white, granular mineral compound. Walking through it feels like stepping on an inch or more of crusty snow. Somewhere beneath us is rock still hot from when lava flowed here.

Later we’re reclining nude in an open pool of thermal water, this one safely at bathtub temperature. Steen Mountain rises to the west. To the east is the Alvord Playa, normally a dead-level sheet of hardpan stretching for many miles, one of the driest places in North America. With the spring rains it shimmers with real water, not a mirage. From our camp last night, a mile uphill, as the light fell we watched the water gradually still until a perfect double range of mountains formed. Then the nightly downhill breeze behind us arose, which slowly erased the reflection from the near to the far edge. At night the water looked like a bank of fog in the valley, reflecting starlight.