I'm still catching my breath. My heart is still pounding re-telling this story. I like to stick to gambling but this is too good. Let me preface by telling you I'm just getting home from a trip to the coast via Death Valley and it's there where this story takes place.

I've just seen the recent Osama Ben Laden tape and my first thought was "Thank God I'm on the RIGHT SIDE." Could you just imagine President Bush hugging his M-16 stroking his long beard smoking hashish out of his hookah sitting on the floor in a cave somewhere in Colorado with Dick Cheney and Geraldo Rivera in their finest checkered turbans and a Fox News camera man, no furniture in the room, eating out of wooden bowls talking to the American troops on his Radio Shack 2-way while CNN showed Osama Bin Laden enjoying the beautiful Christmas trees in his palace in Kabul while eating gourmet food off china and throwing Christmas and New Year's Eve Ball's while his troops wiped out the last remaining American armed forces in the world in their last stronghold somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. And all of us Americans cowered in caves heated by coal, eating off the floor, waiting to meet Allah as the Taliban forces blasted us with 15,000 lb. Daisy Cutter bombs from 30,000 ft.? And as the end is near for these guys as I write this, I couldn't imagine what they must have gone through having to face the most formidable armed forces in the world. Watching and feeling the thundering war machines of the United States bringing certain death from the sky.

It was the last thing on my mind as I began my trip to the coast through Death Valley, which in itself is a stark and incredible place. But the most stunning view in the valley is a place called Dante's View. It overlooks an area called Badwater, which is the lowest elevation in the United States at 200ft. below sea level. It's a huge white saline valley actually larger than the state of Rhode Island, the only thing going on out there on a daily basis besides death is the mining of Chloride salt and Borax. But it's most unique Unnatural feature is that it borders an area known as China Lakes Navel Weapons Range to the south, Fort Irwin Army Training Center right next to that, and Edwards Air Force base just west of that also borders Death Valley, and to the south of all this is the Marine Corps Air/Ground Combat Center in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

The most unique features of the area is that it strangely resembles the same features in Afghanistan as well as the rest of the middle east (this is where the troops trained for Desert Storm) with everything from snow capped mountains thousands of feet high, miles of sand dunes, huge dry lakes caked and cracked from the sun, and big rocks as well as black jagged lava rocks everywhere, probably the most inhospitable place in the United States, and in the summer, this is without a doubt, the most inhospitable place in the world.

This IS the hottest place on the planet in summer as well as the driest with temperatures reaching over 120 degrees in June and hundreds of miles to the nearest shelter and water and less than 2 inches of rain a year. And thus the reason all the armed forces train in the entire area. If these guys can conquer this terrain, they can tackle anything, anywhere in the world. From secret runways on the dry lakes, to helicopter pads in the middle of nowhere. As I crossed the monument border and started 4 wheeling it up the mountain to Dante's View I noticed in the rear-view mirror the emergency lights from the California Highway Patrol cars that were blocking off the entrance to Death Valley, their reason would soon become apparent.

When I reached the peak of Dante's View some 30 minutes later, coming over the last ridge to the view that overlooked the entire Death Valley floor from thousands of feet above. I was stunned at the view. There was a parking area that was empty and it was then that I remembered I hadn't seen a car since I crossed into the monument except for the CHP's with the lights on. Now it was nagging me why they had the lights going. Probably chasing some criminal across the desert in high pursuit. Maybe some guys knocked over some casinos in Vegas and were trying to get across the border (too much Ocean's Eleven) but I grabbed my cameras and tripods and walked to the rim of the canyon wall that overlooks Badwater by 2000 ft.

I was determined to get some pictures up here. As I stood on the precipice of the cliffs, the chilled wind fresh out of the snow covered Sierra Nevada's ripped through the mountains and I could only set up one camera at a time with the winds threatening to blow the tripod over, but an artist must pay the price for greatness, so I braved the winds and walked to the edge. I remember feeling so isolated and alone up here as I looked out on the endless stretch of desert, and I was loving it as I set my mind to setting up the right placement of the camera for the shot when I first heard the distant thunder.

At first I thought it was the wind picking up to a gale force until the ground started to shake. It was then I flashed on where I was and figured it had to be an earthquake since this was mostly volcanic land and after all, this is California, then the shaking increased into a vibration that shook the very rocks I was standing on. The camera wobbled as I grabbed it before it fell over, and from below the canyon rim like the flash of the end of the world came two grey F-16's at full power well exceeding the speed of sound, afterburners thundering behind as the two flew past me so fast and so close I could only see the two pilots in the cockpits in my mind's eye as they came screaming from off the desert floor in full combat mode.

The thunder blew me on my ass on the rock behind me as the blast of wind and fuel smell hit me well after the F-16's grew into little black dots over the mountain tops and disappeared. I was stunned by the noise and vibration, not scared, I was too scared to be scared, all I could think to do was to grab my cameras and tripod and get the fuck off that mountain. But it was too late as the next blast came, but this wasn't like the F-16's, this was a sound straight out of Hell, this was a noise like nothing I can describe but being in the middle of a hurricane. It was a B-52 bomber gunship coming from under me off the desert floor, 50 mm machine guns hanging off the sides, props turning in full throttle, black diesel fuel burning behind as it cleared the top of the mountain just behind the F-16's not more than a few hundred feet from where I was still struggling to stand.

The fuselage was so huge it blocked out the sun casting a huge shadow over the entire peak. The winds picked up and blew even colder in the darkness under that B-52. I was so shook up by now from the vibration and noise I was actually shell-shocked. I could barely still think of anything to do but to forget the damn car and get down under a rock in a hole when the next wave came from the other side of the Panamint Mountains.

I didn't know what to expect but it wasn't like the sound of the jets or the bomber. The wind suddenly picked up once again with the thunder, I knew something was coming but I couldn't imagine what as I hid behind a huge boulder until the two Apache helicopters simultaniously cleared the top of the ridge. First I could see what must have been radar cones on top, followed by the huge prop and the incredible wind from the prop wash, then the helicopter itself which the only description I could give it is that "It looks like death" in a surprisingly skinny body with the machine gun hanging off the mouth and what surely looked like fully loaded missile launchers on the sides hanging off the short wings.

After they cleared the mountain tops, closely behind came two Huey helicopters complete with 30mm cannons on each side and armed troops standing at the doors. In seconds the helicopters cleared the ridge and over and down the other side into Badwater valley. Now I knew where they were headed, to an area known as The Devil's Golf Course.

This was the lowest part of the valley and without doubt, the most incredibly inhospitable place you could imagine. Here, alkaline mounds grow out of the ancient dry ocean bed, salt white caps frozen in time. Sharp little spikes like shards of glass, so sharp it would shred a car tire instantly and it's a huge area. In the 1800's when the settlers tried to cross this valley, many were turned back forced to travel miles out of their way unable to cross in leather shoes and wooden wheels and the poor horses and mules that would bleed trying to walk Devil's Golf Course. Only the Shoshone Indians knew the way across and were invaluable for this knowledge. I once drove to the edge and walked maybe 20 feet into the area to get a picture and I literally ripped the side of my gym shoe trying to balance myself on the needles. The salts got into my shoes and worked its way into my socks and rubbed my foot raw.

The Huey's stopped and hovered over Devil's Golf Course and at what looked like maybe twenty feet off the ground the ropes flew down the sides of the helicopters and out repelled the dozen Special Forces right into the middle of the ragged terrain. Now I knew why the CHP had the lights on and was closing off the valley to traffic. I clearly wasn't meant to be seeing this; I wasn't supposed to be here. Within less than two minutes the troops were off the copters, guns strapped to their backs, and the copters took a steep bank to the right and were back over the ridge and out of sight in literally seconds. And although I swear I saw them come down out of the copters, I couldn't for the life of me tell you which way they went when the cloud of dust settled. How the hell these guys crossed that land, and did it so fast, it was open flat land of needle-like spikes for a hundred yards to the rocks where they landed and in less than a couple of minutes they were gone without a trace.

This was better than any Siegfried and Roy show, this was for real and these guys weren't fucking around. Had I picked up my cell phone to call someone to tell them what I was seeing when everything started, it would have been all over by the time they picked up on the other end, and no one would have believed me that within the last three minutes two F-16's , one huge B-52 gunship, two fully armed Apache Helicopters, Sidewinder missiles and all, and two full Huey's just flew from under me, past me in both directions at full throttle, landed 12 Special Forces somewhere under me on the desert floor where no sane man would set foot, and there was nothing left of them but the dust cloud in the air down valley. These guys were literally shadows. And the scariest thing was the fact that there were 12 soldiers somewhere below me, fully armed to the teeth and they were playing war games most likely with live ammunition, and I wasn't supposed to be here.

The first thing I was thinking was "Thank God I'M ON THEIR SIDE" (I just hope they remember that before they start firing). The next thing I was thinking was "shit, and these guys are just practicing." I grabbed the cameras and jumped in the jeep but it was too late. Up to the parking lot came two park rangers in pickup trucks. Now I'm screwed.

They pulled up in front of me and got out of the pickups with guns drawn. My first thought was that these guys don't look like park rangers, they looked more like Army Rangers but all I could really look at were the guns pointed at my stupid little head, I'm thinking of the last time I went target shooting and instead of the old bulls eye, I got one of those full size silhouette targets of the outline of a man and I'm thinking "God I hope I'm not looking like that to these guys right about now". Waving my hands in the air I said in my best Brooklyn accent to sound as American as I could "Hey, yo, yo, guys, chill out, I ain't armed (for your information, the word "ain't" is a real American word, the rest of the world says "is not"). Next thing I would say was "Diamondbacks won the World Series" or maybe "Semper Fi" or maybe "I loved Yogi Bear, But I liked the Park Ranger even more") they holstered the guns and told me to get out of my car.

I finally got the sense they were calm and weren't gonna shoot when one said "What the hell are you doing up here? How'd you get up here?"

"I was just four-wheeling up the trail there for the last half hour or so. I'm from Vegas and I'm headed up to the 395, what's going on?"

"What's going on is the park is closed right now and you have to leave, follow me out to the park entrance."

He wasn't mad or anything, just stern and wasn't about to discuss the fact that I had another 150 miles to go through this desert to the west and what he was telling me was to backtrack 50 miles back east to Pahrump, then another 60 miles to Las Vegas and start over in another direction.

"Guys, I'm headed to the 395, I just came from Vegas and can't I just get through the park…?"

He hollered, "Sir, I said get in the car and follow me out RIGHT NOW!"

Well that's it, now I'm pissed; he ain't talking to me that way. I get up my courage and get ready to stand my ground, stand up for my rights as an American citizen and a man, I pumped up my chest and curled my arms in my best strong man pose and said in my toughest, sternest voice as loud as I could…."YEEESSS SIR!!" and got the hell back in my car and followed him out of the park like a baby elephant. (Well I didn't want to have to get ugly with the guy.)

So now I go back to my opening paragraph. I just couldn't imagine being a member of some army or band of guys that want to pick a fight with the United States Army and Air Force and Marines. What it takes to grab a gun and a box of ammo, some Falafel and pita breads and turn and kiss my wife and kids goodbye saying "Good by honey, I'm off to Denver to fight the Taliban, you can watch me on Fox News with Geraldo, what's that? Yes dear, he's the idiot in the turban trying to look like Yassir Arafat. And don't worry dear, I got my AK47 and my winter robes and some cornbread, and besides, when they say Daisy Cutters on CNN hun... just remember daises, you know, them pretty little yellow flowers"

Now after seeing Osama sitting in a cave somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan listening to the Daisies fall, telling his last men by radio to fight to the death while he cowers behind a rock stroking his AK-47 praising Allah for the great job and hoping all his body parts makes it to heaven at the same time before he assumes cave-floor temperature, and our President holidays up in Camp David with the family as we all enjoy our freedom just a little bit more than we did on 9-11, and I sit here warm and cozy living free in Las Vegas USA, getting ready to celebrate the holidays.

All I can think of to say to those guys is "WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?" Then all I can think to myself is "Thank God I'm on the right side."

Happy Holidays
Ken Pearlman