My name is Amy LaVelle Noel. I have been exploring Death Valley and the Mojave since I was 18. I fell in love with it the first moment I breathed in the big sky. Since that initial trip, I have visited Death Valley at least bi-annually, as well as many other parts of the Mojave. Ten years ago, I started spending even more time there. I found Tecopa when I was 19 or 20, and each trip to Death Valley included a visit to Tecopa’s hot springs. The first time I saw Amargosa Valley was on an Easter morning from the end of Echo Canyon within Death Valley, and once again, I fell in love.
My “day job” for 18 years had been working at the Getty Museum. Starting at the end of August 2000, I began a 3-month study and renewal leave. I volunteered myself to the Shoshone Museum and camped in Tecopa to see if I could get sick of the place. Well, I didn’t. I fell more in love. At the end of my leave, I decided I wanted to find a piece of land for myself. I was interested in the old Hide-a-Way and found it was attached to the resort, which has been closed for some years.
My New Year’s resolution for 2001 was to DREAM BIG. One thing led to another, and I was able to negotiate a fair deal for the 160 acres that included the resort and the Hide-a-Way. I formed an LLC and began resurrecting the resort in the summer of 2001. I had a 5-year plan that aimed to have me as a full-time resident after my youngest daughter finished high school. However, I found myself in Tecopa very regularly, and there were welcoming hosts there in my absence.
Wonderful folks make the desert their home. It takes a special kind of person to realize that in the wide-open space, sky, and silence, we are not alone at all. Raynard Banham in Scenes in American Deserata perhaps describes us better as “desert freaks.” Indeed, we are all special, but too often we don’t take time to slow down and experience something bigger than ourselves.
When you start venturing across what Mary Austin described as the land of little rain, laid before your eyes are eons of time. When you take the time to experience it, in all its extreme beauties, something in your soul stirs a place in your heart. Even if you only ever visit once, you will never be the same. There will be a place in your heart that “oohs” at the great expanse and an “ahhing” in your spirit that echoes the inevitable “ahhhh” heard when folks step into the hot baths.
The desert has done all that for me. I love it when I’m all by myself just as much as I love to share it with folks. In the many years of camping out and exploring, my dreaming has been enriched. And so, I am honored to have had the opportunity to dream big and I am ever grateful for the courage to act on those dreams. With feet on the ground and head in the heavens, everything is possible.
I am honored by the wonderful people who have contributed in many ways towards the dream of resurrecting the Tecopa Hot Springs Resort. The Tecopa Hot Springs Resort dream has been dormant for the last six years. I am thankful and awed by the many wonderful blessings and hard work that is going into resurrecting this dream. We all look forward to welcoming you when you pass by. We hope you will stay and spend some time dreaming big too.