On the Back Roads (2 page)

“You will. The roads you travel will lead you right to them. Most people think I'm nuts when I ask that. But can you imagine? Just think about it, what a thrill when they discover the ruts made by those wagon trains are really there. Yes, in a New York second they would take your place. Some will eventually get out here. A few, maybe. But for one seemly good reason or another, most never will. And that saddens me.”

Emmy was not just an astute observer. She was very wise. I'm sorry that I left without telling her that. Nor did I tell her that she accomplished what all teachers aspire to but few achieve: She filled me with questions about my life and how I should be living it.

What did Emmy mean by “the last real hope?” What is happening in the small towns of this country? All I actually know about present-day America is what I see in the newspapers and on television. Emmy, it appears, is a far better source than either of those.

I want to see the real America for myself. I don't mean a senior-citizen tour, seeing it out of the window of a sightseeing bus. If the wagon ruts are still there, I will walk in them. When the main-street diner opens in the morning, I will be there to share coffee with those who want to chat. I will sit on the steps of the courthouse, and maybe in a rocker with a family on their front porch. And I'll see the sun rise over a place,
any place,
as many times as I want.

I can't cover the whole country, but I have the time, the mobility, and pocket change to see the West.

Emmy's words are still with me, what she said about a true journey. It never ends. I must admit, I have not yet started mine. It's high time.

I
found a place to spend the night near a grapefruit orchard off Highway S22. My headlights swept a registered historic marker mounted in a rock pyramid. This is great, a site of epic significance. I parked my motor home near the marker.

I dragged out cocktail hour and dinner and forgot the marker until I was ready for bed. But I had to know. So I trudged out in shower shoes with a flashlight to read the plague. It told of Pegleg Smith, “a mountain man, prospector, and spinner of tall tales. The legend about his lost gold mine has grown. Countless people have searched.” So much for epic significance.

I read somewhere that there are 1,070 of these historic markers in California alone. Waiting for sleep, I wondered how many there are between here and Canada, between here and the Mississippi, between here and Duluth. Did they tell of Lewis and Clark, of Martin and Lewis, of Mickey Mantle, of Mickey Mouse? What was next, over the next hill?

I awoke in the dark to a wild and frightening sound. It was the scream of a coyote. He was close. I got up and opened the door, the chilly night drifting in around my bare feet. I saw starlight, as much of it as I have ever seen, and a
satellite, whirling by as steady as a lamp. What is not on earth is best seen from this desert. Perhaps a cowboy in Montana might argue with that. But I have never seen a night sky in Montana or anywhere else as crowded with stars as this sky over the California desert.

The coyote was off slinking in a patch of thorny mesquite with his fellows of fang, poison, stinger, and claw. I would not see him unless he wanted me to. Coyotes are cagey, conniving cowards. They have a lot of enemies. I am one.

Last year, a pack of them killed our family dog, the only pet my two children ever had. A lovable, spoiled, miniature poodle, he was good at licking faces, not defending himself. When he was attacked, he probably yelped. Nobody heard him, so no one went to his rescue. I know he died wondering why.

I sat in the doorway, listening to the gent le voice of the night. It had taken up the details and shadows of the day and had wiped the face of the desert to simple, uncluttered blackness. My mind was reaching back, deriving memories from the most remote of sources. Surprisingly, I was not pushing them away or shutting them out.

I looked at my watch, not for the time but for the date. It has been eighteen months and two days since my marriage of twenty-four years ended. Tonight, I am feeling at peace with myself for the first time since. Guilt. Remorse. Shame. Defeat. All those gut-wrenching pains that pile one on top of another during the collapse of what was once a lifetime commitment. They are gone, at least for now.

I am seeing a universe of stars and feeling awed by it. Hearing the chilling scream a coyote and feeling both anger and sorrow, as if for the first time. It is easier to separate the two now. Anger is simple to handle. Sorrow, an affliction of solitude, is not and never will be easy.

I am paying attention. This moment is important. For months, I have been a non-participant, existing as an uninterested spectator, while valued life experiences have passed like meaningless news clips. They flashed and disappeared for my lack of attention or interest. There are no reruns.

It's a wonderful journey, this life. I don't want to spend any more of it asleep in the back of the bus. It's not too late. It never is. A man becomes his attentions. It is all he has, or ever will have. His observations and curiosity make and remake him.

Emmy said it best yesterday: The journey is what's important, the getting there. The poor sucker who misses it, misses about all he is going to get.

T
he next morning, my principal decision was which way to turn. To go east would send me back the way I came, across desert canyons on S22 toward the Salton Sea. Turning the other way, in minutes I would be in Borrego Springs. Beyond it laid mountains and the Pacific Coast north of San Diego.

On the map, Borrego Springs appeared as a town to be stumbled upon while you're looking for someplace else. Driving through it is not the quickest way to get anywhere. It's off by itself, surrounded into perpetuity by the 600,000 acres of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, the largest such park in the continental United States.

Residents, I discovered, call the park the “green belt,” or their guarantee that “southern California” will never get any closer to them than it is right now. About 3,000 people live here. Most are retired. Another 2,000 are here just for the winter. Those who stay the summer hibernate, as 100-degree days are the norm. For many, the state park is the reason they visit. For others, green belt is the reason they stay.

Borreso Springs is laid-back to the point that even a traffic light would be too disruptive. I doubt it will ever have one.
The town center is a traffic circle. It has a controlling sign that asks nothing more of anyone than to yield.

Around his forehead was a bandanna streaked with sweat and red dirt. The same earth tones spattered his Suzuki T-shirt that fit him like a decal. The cutoff sleeves displayed the beefy arms of a vain weight lifter.

A petite lady behind the counter, wearing the brown smock of a park volunteer, was explaining to him that the upper three miles of Coyote Canyon were now closed to vehicles. “Habitat res to ration,” she cited.

“That includes my dirt bike?”

She said nothing, staring at him over the flat-topped frame of her reading glasses.

“I'm all for the habit at,” he argued, “but ya let guys on horses go up there. So what's wrong with me on a bike?”

“How about fifty-two sensitive species of rare desert plants in the canyon? They need a vacation from you macho guys and your bikes and trikes and Jeeps,” she said smiling.

While this duel was playing itself out, I was studying the map, spread on the counter that we three shared. Since we had the counter in common, I didn't feel that I was interrupting. “How is it driving out of here over the mountain?” I asked.

They both mumbled something in body language like, “Good, we can change the subject.”

“You have a couple of choices,” the lady said looking up.

He jumped in before she could finish. “It's worse coming down. Believe me, I wouldn't think twice about doing that—going up Montezuma Grade, I mean.”

I believed him. He had the look of a gutsy guy who would not think twice about doing most things. He pointed to a wavy red line on the map. It began at Hellhole Flat and ran up the San Ysidro Mountains. Montezuma Grade. A 3,200-foot rise on a ten-mile stretch of twisted roadway.

“Banner Road is easier,” the lady offered. “That's how I go, even though it's longer.”

He thought for a few seconds. “You didn't know that road has 107 curves in it, I bet? The guy that drives the school bus told me that. He does that kinda stuff, counts the curves.”

“I didn't know that,” the lady replied, expressing genuine interest. “But I'll tell you what my garbage man told me. When he is on Moniezuma Grade, he puts down those two iron lifters on the front of his truck just for protection.”

The dirt biker grimaced. “God, I hate to even think about that. He's not driving a garbage truck. That's a lethal weapon, a medieval tank!”

“From the map, Montezuma Grade looks a lot more winding than Banner Road,” I said.

“But there is a lot less of it. You are through it in six miles.” The biker was making a final point: “And they just put up a new guardrail along there.”

“Fine…I don't intend to use the guardrail.”

The end. Since I didn't have to go over the mountain, I would n't.

I was inside the visitor center of the state park, actually a natural history museum. The windowless building is an architectural lesson in desert survival, taught by the animals that live here. Built in 1979, three of its sides are buried in the sand. The entrance faces north, always in the shade.

Rosemary McDaniel, another lady in a brown smock, inivited me to the back. The research lab, lounge, and conference room that displays things the public never sees. She and her husband, George, are among the 100 park volunteers. The opportunity to work here and pursue their interest in natural history was the big reason why they moved to Borrego Springs when they retired. He was a veterinarian, she a school teacher.

“Now we are lecturers,” Rosemary said. “I do animals. He does fossils.”

The sun-bleached skulls of Peninsular bighorn sheep lined the shelves in the conference room. The mountains of the park are among the last refuges for these sure-footed climbers, known for their massive horns that curve backward in a spiral. Bones of earlier inhabitants laid there too: camels, zebras,
and several horse species. A giant fossil zebra found in the park, Rosemary told me, has been discovered nowhere else on earth. To paleontologists here like George, who talk of time in epochs, the bighorns were recent additions. They migrated to North America over 10,000 years ago from Siberia. Their numbers have dwindled to just 3 percent of what they once were. An estimated 750 remain in the United States. About 400 live here.

Grazing, mining, homesteading, and all that settlers brought to the West began the decline of the bighorn. But the metro politan sprawl of southern California spelled real disaster. Off-road vehicles, trespassing cattle, poaching in the 1960s and early 1970s, plus drought and disease have pushed the bighorn population here to the brink. Efforts are underway to reverse that, from removing wild cattle to building new water sources.

Heading back to the campground in the park, where I had plugged in my motor home earlier, I walked the trail through an after-dark picnic area for sixty species of reptiles—the usual night predators—and an occasional mountain lion working the desert floor. I remembered what Rosemary said: “If a cat is allowed to roam around the edges of town at night, it has about a two-year life span.”

Grapefruit and lemon trees grow beyond the campground. They are the only crops cultivated here, except for grass on the golf links.

A
n hour before the sun set, it disappeared behind the mountains, triggering nesting instincts in the campground. Awnings twirled up into rolls. Fire pits filled with wood. Ice cubes tumbled into glasses. Kids appeared and asked, “What's for dinner?” Propane lamps began to glow. The faces of Tom Brokaw and Dan Rather flashed on TV screens. We settled in.

I poured a martini into a chilled coffee mug and stepped outside to meet the neighbors. They all had busy lives elsewhere. They had come to get away from the stress. All too obvious, since this was a young crowd, mostly couples, many with children. Some had brought toys—motorbikes, dune buggies, even boats. They were day-campers or weekenders, not full-timers like Emmy. As a rule, I think this crowd prefers developed campgrounds like this one in a state park because there are things to do and room to do it. They give
“recreational vehicle'”
its definition.

A couple walking a shaggy sheepdog stopped to ask if I had any flashlight batteries. “Be happy to pay for them, if you can spare a couple,” the man said.

Before long we had his flashlight working again. He was so grateful, he refilled my coffee mug to overflowing.

They resumed their walk. I tagged along. We never did introduce ourselves, but they called each other Jerry and June. Their dog was Billingsly. New residents of Chula Vista, California, they brewed coffee for a living, six days a week, at a Starbucks store.

We talked some about America's current fascination with fine coffee. I confessed that I could never spend three bucks for a cup, no matter how fine.

“Funny thing,” Jerry admitted, “I can't either. Hopefully there are only a few of us, or I'm in the wrong business. When I was a kid, growing up in Montana, my folks would drive forty miles to save a buck. Everybody went to the next town to shop at Wal-Mart. In those days, you spent time to save money. Now, you spend money to save time.”

“When all those people took their business to Wal-Mart,” I asked, “what happened to the stores back home?”