Finally he said, "It's faster. And
it's a challenge."
"Wouldn't it be more of a challenge to walk?" I asked,
but didn't get a response.
Having once owned a 175cc Yamaha Enduro-a
noisome, obnoxious machine that filled the woods with a chain-saw whine and
converted trails to muck-I speak with the resolution of the reformed when I
call dirt bikes the mosquitoes of the desert. Their buzz obliterates the
perfect quiet, and their probosci pierce the skin of the planet injecting
environmental malaria. In one mile of off-road travel, a knobby-tired
motorcycle displaces three quarters of a ton of soil: in some parts of the
California desert, topsoil that took 10,000 years to form has been ruined in
two or three by ORVs. They also destroy the hearing of kangaroo rats and the
burrows of desert tortoises, which other animals depend on for shelter. A
before/after study of the 1974 Barstow-Las Vegas race revealed a 90 percent
loss of small mammals along the route.
One possible reason ORV riders seem
remorseless is that this harsh and rugged landscape gives the impression of
invulnerability, of having the upper hand. This image is an illusion. Precisely
|
because of its aridity,
the desert takes a long time to heal. Tank tracks left during World War II by
troops training under General George S. Patton are still visible in parts of
the East Mojave, and the flora now inhabiting these areas tends to consist of
weeds inhospitable to native fauna.
"They say we're ruining the desert!"
cried the Darwins. "We're not ruining the desert! We're the friends of the
desert!"
The Friends of the Desert kept me awake all night, one of them
yelling, "I feel good!" at regular intervals. At dawn he was accompanied by a
wild burro braying in the bush, which inspired the dogs to join in.
Later
that morning, as I ate breakfast with the people camped next to me, the fat guy
wandered over, wearing an Army jacket and a green watch cap. "Hi" he said,
staring intently.
"Hi."
"Real free country out here, huh?"
We
nodded.
"We really love it out here," he said. "We're from Darwin. My name's
John."
"What do you do in Darwin, John?"
"Whatever I want."
We stirred
our oatmeal. John kept staring. I wondered if maybe he wanted something to
eat.
"I used to live here," he said at last. "People called me Dirty John
because I never took a bath. We come out here to get away from the telephone
poles and power lines. If we do anything that offends you, just let us
know."
"Well," I volunteered, "I guess I thought you could've been a little
quieter last night."
John shrugged. "We're working on it," he said. He
started to turn away but then thought better of it. "You know. we come out here
to be by ourselves and do what we want."
"With all these other people
around?"
"Listen," he said. "I can show you lots of beautiful places where
you can go to be by yourself. If you try to control people here, you're gonna
get in trouble."
"Right," I said, and asked my neighbor if he thought it
was all right to use soap in the dishwashing pool.
"You can do whatever you
want," said Dirty John. "It's your place."
After breakfast, I searched
the campground for a BLM ranger named Steve Smith, whom I'd arranged to meet.
Tall, skinny, and off-duty, he wasn't wearing his uniform but a T-shirt,
shorts, and running shoes. When I complained about the Darwin crew, Smith said:
"Actually, he's right. You get all kinds here. I kind of like the idea that
people can come out here and be themselves."
Smith and I had agreed to take
our respective vehicles to Eureka Valley via the four-wheel-drive corridor that
leads there from the springs. We would be passing through one of the largest
roadless areas in California, a region proposed as wilderness by both Cranston
and the BLM. The route was a rocky track up the alluvial fan, affording close
examination of a 40-million-year-old ocean bed filled with fossilized rock and
the erosional debris of the surrounding mountains. A couple of miles out, we
passed two guys in an open jeep, wearing pistols and smoking cigars. Soon after
that, we met a lone backpacker. "We've been seeing more and more of that,"
Smith commented. "It's kind of neat."
Under the political circumstances,
this solitary hiker loomed rather large. As S.7 is written, the area through
which we were |
| THE DESERT PROTECTION
ACT: |
| WHERE
IT STANDS |
THE CALIFORNIA DESERT
PROTECTION ACT is now before the full Senate Committee on Energy and Natural
Resources. Traditionally, a bill with a one-state agenda gets quick passage
through the Senate if both of its home-state senators support it. Democrat Alan
Cranston, the author of the bill, has made it his top priority for the 100th
Congress, but Pete Wilson, a Republican, has been slow with his full
support.
Environmentalists view Wi1son's hesitation as political maneuvering
for a fall reelection bid. "His modus operandi is to take a position very late
in the game," says Patty Schifferle of the Wilderness Society. "He's using the
last few months before the election to read the political waters instead of
taking a stand."
A breakthrough came in May when Wilson cosigned a letter
with Cranston recommending the bills markup (the committee vote that sends a
bill to the Senate floor). Wilson's office reports, however, that the senator
is still withholding his endorsement while he negotiates for expanded road
access in the proposed Mojave Desert National Park. The preservation of this
area is the centerpiece of Cranston's legislation, so debates on a compromise
are hot and high-pitched. If this debate keeps the bill from reaching the floor
before the October recess Cranston will reintroduce it next February, even as
an identical bill sponsored by Congressman Mel Levine makes its way through the
House.
The opposition to S.7 is composed of ORV users, miners, and a few
disaffected environmentalists. Organized as the California Desert Coalition,
they are active in citizen lobbying, but do not have strong legislative pull;
the state's conservative political powers do not see S.7 as a threat to their
constituents, and have not made opposition to it a platform priority.
The
success of S.7 would signal a precedent-setting reevaluation of arid-land
management in the United States. "Historically, the Bureau of Land Management's
philosophy has been oriented toward use and consumption instead of preservation
and use," says Kim Cranston, son of the senator and a spokesman for the Desert
Protection League. "This bill is a reinterpretation of that mandate." If it is
passed. look for S.7 spin-offs in the iarge tracts of BLM managed land in
Northern California, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. |
| -MARGARET A. MILLER |
|