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There’s something about a summer-solstice visit to Death Valley that makes me grateful to live in the comparatively lush and mild desert of Arizona.

Tucked in the shadow of the Panamint, Amargosa, and Slate ranges of California, the place is preternaturally dry; if you’re old enough to remember the television ads for “forty-mule-team” borax laundry soap, you’ll know that Death Valley has always been a metonym for a kind of aridity you can just barely begin to comprehend, the kind of place where the slightest breeze can suck the last ounce of juice from you.

That’s a bit of an exaggeration, to be sure, but not by much. And that aridity is often to be preferred to the Valley’s vaunted oases: chalky, sulfurous waterholes that promise to disintegrate your innards if you should so much as taste their wares. Even turkey vultures stay away from such places. As for the waterless parts of Death Valley, they’re an exercise in receding vitality; as you descend deeper into the area, farther and farther into the alkali basin at its heart, you’ll notice that plant and animal life becomes scarcer and scarcer until, at the Valley’s nadir, it disappears altogether.

Let this be our classroom, if only metaphorically. Death Valley need not live up to its name if you know the proper techniques of desert survival. Those techniques are transferable, too; once you learn them, you can apply them to any desert anywhere - even to an unseasonably warm day in Dorset, for that matter.

The first rule of desert survival is to carry an ample supply of water - at least two gallons for every day you’ll be out in the elements - and to use that water often.

The second is to avoid exposure to the sun by keeping in shade whenever possible and wearing long pants, a long-sleeved shirt, a broad-brimmed hat, and sunscreen.

The third is to avoid drinking alcohol, which quickly dehydrates a person.

After those basics, the rules become somewhat more controversial. The SAS training manuals for desert survival, prepared by instructors for the elite British military unit, opine, for instance, that you should avoid eating while out in the desert, reasoning that “digestion uses up fluids, increasing dehydration.”

Dr. Howard Backer disagrees. A California physician who for the last decade has been studying heatstroke victims (about 125 of whom, in an average year, require medical attention) at Grand Canyon National Park, Backer concludes in a recent National Academy of Sciences report that most cases of serious heat illness are brought on by drinking too much water and eating too little food. By drinking great quantities of water, Backer says, hikers deplete their reserves of electrolytes, especially sodium and potassium, which aid the transmission of electrical signals from the brain to the body. The resulting hyponatremia, or “water intoxication,” leads to confusion, disorientation, and fatigue. Turning received wisdom on its ear, Backer urges that desert hikers eat plenty of salty foods like crackers, gorp, and pretzels and drink electrolyte-rich fluids like Gatorade along the trail, saving the Evian and Perrier, or just cool tap water, for the evening campfire.

Recent incidents seem to bear out Backer’s ideas about electrolyte imbalance. On June 8, 1996, a 15-year-old Boy Scout named David Phillips died in the Grand Canyon after having hiked for several hours in the heat of day. Reportedly Phillips had access to water but had not eaten during the hike. The same was true in the case of 38-year-old Alex Dunne, who became disoriented while hiking in the Santa Rita Mountains south of Tucson, Arizona, in early August 1995. Again, Dunne had ample water - the Santa Ritas are laced with relatively clean streams that run most of the year - but no food. He wandered through the rugged mountains for six days before rescuers found him.

Neither of these hikers knew much about the lay of the land, which leads me to this point: the best way to stay alive in the desert is to arm yourself with good information about the places you’re heading: to study topographic maps, ask seasoned veterans about their experiences, and read as much as you can. Armed with that information, you can proceed into the desert - even Death Valley - with confidence.

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