| DO YOU STAY ON THE ROADS WHEN YOU RIDE?" I ASKED ONE BIKER. "MOST OF THE TIME," HE SAID. "BUT IF I SEE SOMETHING I LIKE IN THE DISTANCE, CROSS-COUNTRY, I'M GONNA GO GET IT," |
| vanished
Pleistocene lake, and beyond the dunes lies the pièce de
résistance: hot springs, which sit in the baking sand of the basin like
imperturbable Arabian mullahs. It was the hot springs, and the isolation, that brought me to this valley a couple of years ago during my first intentional trip into the California desert. I had passed through the desert plenty of times, but, like millions of other visitors, starting with the Spanish in the 18th century I'd considered it merely an obstacle between the coast and the rest of the country: at best boring, at worst brutal. But in 1986, a friend and I made a fact-finding trip, during which we discovered that this desert is anything but a wasteland. It's a region of hardy flora, resourceful fauna, immense basins, ragged ranges, charred cinder cones and lava flows-of vivid geology and fragile biology of crystal clarity and total exposure. Our destination on that trip had been Death Valley but we'd also heard about an adjacent basin that, unblessed by national monument status, was equally interesting and less well-known. We traversed two mountain ranges to get there, guessing our way along an unmarked route, jostling for hours over washboarded dirt roads, which ultimately destroyed our air conditioner. By the time we reached the upper spring it was dark, but we found a camp spot and the tubs, and pretty soon somebody handed me a pair of binoculars. which helped me find Halley's comet. Bats swooped tow over the pools as we soaked in 105-degree water beneath a billion stars. Morning revealed where we were: at an oasis in the middle of an enormous saline bowl, surrounded by striated mountains. and creosote brush that dotted the desert as far as the eye could see. Mesquite, arroweed, and palm trees grew around the spring. The hot water from the source, a natural well surrounded by grass, trickled down to two bathing pools-one a raised oval, the other a sunken hexagon. A separate area was designated for washing, and an outhouse stood off in the scrub. Two giant peace signs had been
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scraped onto a pair
of nearby cinder cones. possibly for the benefit of the pilots who soon made
their presence known. Fighter jets from Edwards Air Force Base and the China
Lake Naval Weapons Center appeared over the horizon as the sun began to climb,
preceding by some seconds their engines' roar, which threatened to burst the
backs of our skulls as the planes passed a hundred feet above us. This place-Saline Valley-was nothing if not unique. The property was managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), but the hot springs were maintained solely by the people who visited them. Our fellow campers had come from all over the state to bask naked in the desert sun without fees, rules, or electricity. It was a kind of anti-bureaucratic Eden-a free zone in the middle of nowhere. Which made the petition pretty interesting. Next to this upper spring was a handbill decrying the California Desert Protection Act. or Senate Bill 7. recently introduced in Congress by Senator Alan Cranston of California. The bill aimed to create 82 new wilderness areas totaling four and a half million acres, plus a new national park, Mojave. It also proposed to expand the boundaries of Death Valley and Joshua Tree national monuments, and make them national parks. Under the act, the area surrounding the hot springs would be designated as wilderness; virtually the entire valley would become part of Death Valley National Park. According to the handbill, S.7 intended to preserve the area "for the enjoyment of future generations rather than for us." Attached was a petition against the act, with a pen for visitors to sign their names. I didn't sign, but I was vexed by the issue. As a rule, I'm all for wilderness; but it seemed that the ungoverned mystique of the valley would surely evaporate if it became part of a national park. From Yellowstone to Yosemite, our nation possesses numerous examples of unique trampled spots; whereas blank white areas on a map can catalyze the imagination, green sections are magnets for Winnebagos-and Ticketron reservations for these hot springs would be profoundly depressing. On the other hand, miners had trashed sections of the valley, and the hot springs were popular with dirt bikers and three-wheelers. Despite BLM prohibition of off-road vehicles (ORVs), motorcycles obviously had free run of the area- tracks crisscrossed the ancient lakebed as heedlessly as they might a supermarket parking lot. When I got home, I researched the Cranston bill and found it had arisen in response to the 1980 BLM Desert Plan. This report. which cost $8 million and has been called the largest regional-planning effort ever attempted in the United States, directed the BLM to manage, use, develop, and protect" the 12.1 million acres of California desert under its control. The contradictions inherent in the language were reflected in the BLM's recommendations for the desert, which the agency had carved up into a variety of zones: 2.1 million acres were designated wilderness-study areas; the remainder were recommended for multiple use and zoned for intensive, moderate, or limited development, which included mining, grazing, ORV activity, and oil and gas exploration. Although environmental groups were less than thrilled by the plan. they went along with it, as Jimmy Carter and Cecil Andrus were about to be succeeded by Ronald Reagan and James Watt. But in 1982 the BLM reduced its recommendations for wilderness to 1.9 million acres; reinstated the Barstow-Las Vegas motorcycle race, outlawed since 1975: and eliminated 47,500 acres from the East Mojave National Scenic Area. which had been created under the 1980 Desert Plan. It also moved to open the Panamint Dunes Wilderness Study Area, west of Death Valley, to ORVs, and |
AUGUST 1988 OUTSIDE