Geology of the Great Basin / Геология Большого Бассейна

The dry sand stretches away as far as I can see to the east and the west. The July sun burns a hole in the sky and sears the desert basin. Shimmering heat waves ripple the sand at the horizon and make the refl ections of the mountains fl icker upside down on the pseudoliquid surface. The sandy mud has shrunk and cracked since the last summer rain and has formed polygonal fractures in the barren brown surface. These are the only marks on the sand. One hundred years ago, feet and ironbound wooden wheels churned the dust of this desolate sandy valley. Emigrants, bound for Oregon, took a shortcut across this forsaken stretch. It was a dash across the sand before the sun parched their tongues black with thirst and shriveled the stock to walking skeletons, or before the sky blackened with the rare but fatal summer rain that would fl ood the dust- covered basin with water and turn the silts to viscous mud. With wagons mired up to their axles, the emigrants foundered in a sea of muck.
Here, in the Black Rock Desert of what would become northern Nevada, the emigrants would watch for a large dark knob across the shimmering sands and beeline straight for it. Below this black rock and slightly to the north is Double Hot Springs. Here the parched people and stock would fi nd boiling hot water, confi rming the devil’s role in fashioning this land. Downstream, where the water had cooled suffi ciently to allow the growth of thick mats of grass, they found respite from the drought lands. This is an unforgiving land, a land of rapid change and contrast. This is the Great Basin of the American desert. What geologic forces created this mountain- studded sandand sage- fi lled bowl? <...>