Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

Opin i()11 (Continued from page 45) an o wn er's manual and ce rtai n ly no mat ch for th e basic info rmat io n sca ttere d through Zen and the A rt of Motorcy cle Main tenance by Ro bert Pirsig. If yo u h ave a frie n d wh o IS co n te mp lati ng h is first motor cy cle, ge t him (or he r) thi s bo o k. It will save your havin g to ans we r man y quest ions ab out water and a rid e back to th e Ortega High way , so who 's to ju dge o r cast stones? I saw th em o nce or twic e th e rest of th e day as I co ntinue d to explore , using th e co mpany LUV pic ku p as a ro lling bas e , but st aying pretty much on dedi cated roads. Th ere 's more gro un d o u t t her e than o ne man co uld cover, on a b ike or on fo ot, in several days. So me of it is fit fo r rid ing an d so me o f it isn ' t. We need to ge t in th ere and define wh ich is what in detail, rather than debat e over a b lanke t closure . things we experienc ed riders hav en't had to think about for years. It may be true, as William Burroughs has said , th at y o u "can' t show someone any thing he doesn't already know," but at leas t a new rider who read s Street Bik e Fun will have see n it all o nce, in print, before he encoun ters it in th e real wo rl d. Charles Clayton The politico-legal meatgrinder The therapeutic and slightly mystical desert A week later, mi nd stuffe d to the poin t o f terminal overload wit h visio ns of BLM map s, co lo red o verlays, the sweeping broad brush of land use policy sp lashe d across lands th at exist o nly in tw o dimensions, I'm off head ed eas t from Cal City in th e co mpany pickup , to wash out all the desperate bureaucratese with visions of the land itself. It's about two p.m., hot and windy. We're bouncing along a two-track tr ail and I'm thinking th at if it gets no worse, I've plenty of fuel to go cro ss-co un try clear to Highway 395 if I want. But it gets worse, and after nearly high -centering th e pickup in one spot and barely making it through the so ft stuff at another wash cro ssing, I'm ready to ba cktrack. By striking cross trail th at head s n orth, never at te mp t ing anything I don 't think I can backtra ck th ro ugh , I co me to ano ther, better tra ck head ed east again. I fo llo w th at in to steeper ground and fin ally call a hal t in fro n t o f a wash I know is im passable to my little truck. J ust beyond t he wash, the te rrai n real ly starts io ge t interesting. To the right, a gully ope ns into a slanted valley bowl th at's been used before by vehicle-borne ca mpers. Ahead, risi ng to one side of th e bowl, is a high place to pp ed wi th a ju mble of flat rocks, what t he ancien ts migh t have ca lled a "h igh seat," a place for watch fir es an d so litary vigils. The wind catches the t ruc k 's door and throws it open as I get o ut to explo re on fo o t. In fact, today on the eastern rim of the bowl th at co n tai ns California Cit y , the wind is an elemental force, roaring unabated across the miles from aro un d the far shoulder of mountains, from Tehachapi and beyond. It's a co nstan t blast-furnace roar in .the ears as I climb (wishing for a bike all the way), and a steady pressure at my back. From the top, Cal City is a thin dark smudge in the distance. The pavillion atop Galileo Hill is a barely-discernible dot. The wheel-tracks of modem man are visible in every direction, but strangely remote and dead. If a man exists in a two-way continum, the desert isolates him from his con temporaries (the horizontal thread) and integrates him with a thread at righ t-angles to the present, a thread that touches only those few who have stood here before. The strongest presence here is not that of the campers who left tracks and half-burned logs, but of those who left no marks, who sat cross-legged on these flat rocks, with this same wind shouting in their ears and cla wing at th eir hair, Part •• In which our boy treks into the wilderness seeking peace, nirvana, & an understanding of the Sierra Club mentality; & returns 'with lacerated forearms, sunburn, & a bad case of poison ivy. Other fables appended. Boy, the Sierra Clubbers are really going to laugh at my first attempt at back-country walking. It's not that I never walk most of the time I walk th e mile or whatever to work in order to hoard gas mon ey fo r th e wee kend . But af te r getting involved with a land-use • work gro up for the Cleveland National Forest, and after fielding a d emand for a large part o f th at forest to be cal led wilderness, I figur ed I'd better ge t off the beaten path and see what 's in there. Ordinarily I'd still ride a bike, but a slowly mending busted arm precludes th at. So, with a thermos of Gatorade and a couple of chocolate bars in my trials fanny-pack, the camera slung around my shoulders, and the G.!. forestry map stuffed in my belt, I struck out up a canyon from Ortega Highway, headed south towards the proposed wilderness. What the hell, the map said after a short trek up Bear Canyon and over the ridge, I'd strike one of the trails that, due to various gate closures, is inaccessible to most vehicles. During the next few hours, I learned several things: a) the Sierra Clubbers are welcome to the particular patch of terrain I was in, b ) st ri king out cross-co nntry in he avy brush with a general-issue map and fog gy idea of where one is going is dumb , c ) and so is hiking such territory alone. A buddy would have talked me out of it . Seriously , much of this land en forces its own de fa cto closure to ORVs, or to an y animal ove r three feet high, fo r th at matter. The brush is so thick you have to crawl through it, and even th at is possible only along tracks made by smaller animals or by ero sio n. I th ough t I was going to spend the rest o f m y life in a thicket. It had its fleeting satisfactions. In th e pla ces you could stand up. In one steep can y o n with a trickle of running water and an overgrowth of scrub oak and stu n ted pine, the faint engine so unds from Ortega Highway (a scant half mile away ) might as well be co m ing fro m th e other side of the moon. Later , perched on an outcropping of ro ck jutting from th e brush, wh ere I can see in all directions, I re alize no human can approach from an y point I can see without a couple hours' hard work. Near one such outcropping I find a I 50 crude small cros s made of branches, stuck in a cairn of ro cks. Every th ing you see o ut here has a nee dle-in-a-haystack qual it y . Yo u kn ow yo u 'll never pass this way again excep t by blindest chance. I've long sin ce given up my o riginal direction, allo wing mysel f to be sw ung in a giant " L" by th e di rectio n o f the plant gro wth and the lay of the land, finally intersecting a half-hidden trail I'd seen off to the northeast earlier. (My original heading had been south.] Now this is more like i t. Grassy underfoot, really fine trail sligh t1y better than handlebar width, from which I spy several primo trials practice rockpiles, as I swing along, walking easily at last. Yes, this is more like it, and no, I'd not want to give this up for trail biking. It 's perfectly suited to the slow, picky-picky scenic riding favored by off-duty trialers, There's a particularl y lovel y creek crossing b y a quiet pool, th en a quarter-mile or so farther o n, I finally intersect a ro ad at a spot where , viewed from th e road, the tr ail is alm ost invisib le . Trick. Having long sin ce ex ha usted the Gatorade and ch oc ola te, I co ntin ue d up along the road southward , ge tt ing more ragged-out as I went. Ab o u t this time th e crazies sho wed up. Now don 't get me wron g, these ca ts were nice eno ugh to me, on ce the y w ere assured ] was no narc. But th ey were a stereoty ped exa mp le of wh y th e Sierra- Clubbers want to close the ro ad s in t his fo rest to all vehicles. Between th em th ey had a was te d black Continental with a smas he d fro n t end, a custo m-pai nted Vega and tw o other cars of dubious origin an d vin tage , sliding and wallowing from ver ge to verge . They were three ways zo n ked , wasted, outta' th eir heads, still drinking rivers of beer; and when th ey ca me to the Portrero gate, th ey 'd have bu st ed it open if they'd had a big eno ugh tool. Welded steel pl ate is tough to argue wi th (tho ugh I've heard th at t he m ore determined vandals man age to st ill sma sh th e gat e occasio nal ly), so t hey all turned aro un d and ro ared back down the mountain. To give 'e m their due, they gave me fasting and waiting fo r a vision to come. The be ginning of a slo w , rh ythmic chant wants to well up in my chest , a moaning song with no words. Whatever is here is st ro ng, an d holds me for -ho w long?before I re luc tan t1y trudge back to the tru ck. Neither man nor veh icle has in truded, and I can see fo r miles. Th at same sp irit inha b its the high pl aces near th e Bars to w-to- Vegas course start area. For a time I'm preoccupied with locating an d p ho tograp hing the visib le evi dence tha t 3000 people cut a hun d red-yard swath through here . It 's pretty spotty o n the rocky rid ge so me where beyond the sm oke bomb. As the En viro nme ntal Imp act Analysis said , m an y of them missed the smoke bomb (because the San Bernardino Coun ty air pollu tio n types mad e th e cl ub use white can iste rs ins tead of the smoke traditio nal ti res). You can sec the tracks coming up to th e rid ge at right angles to join th e m ain st ream as people realize the y 've oversho t the bomb and missed the entry to th e true co urse . The tracks themselves arc rapidly filling with sand, though the wind, that same wind from Cal City , has stripped the surrounding surface bare to the rocks. There are creosote brushes here , some damaged or reduced in size , but green and thriving, The annual vegetation that normally carpets th e space between th e bushes exists only in islands aro un d their bases, tap ere d islands tha t p oin t t he directi on the bikes wen t lik e wea thervanes. Th ere are an im al b urro ws under every survivin g bush , and some in the spaces be t ween. Some of th o se b urrows are ab an do ne d, wi th a skein of spi de rwe b across the ir dead mouth s. Other s have fre sh diggings spe wed o u t over th e mo torcycle t rac ks; th ey have been dug and occup ied since t he race. To o ne side of the ridge, 1-15 can j ust be seen, with its mo ving t ra ffi c. To the other side , a line o f high-t ension wire towers march es off to wa rd Nevada. Beyond, the mo untains brood in rich reddish-brown sile nce, and o ver it all the , same ele me ntal wind roars its mes sage th at th e desert is ete rnal and we with our vehi cles are ephe rnerals soon to van ish, leavin g o ur wheel tracks to join the petro glyphs and the stone cairn s and th e ancient chipp ing-places. In our 20th-<:entury arrogance, do we really think we can "destroy" this place? Or is our present see-saw battle over the desert simply a political confrontation between two groups of people with different perceptions of the desert 's beauty? Regardless of who wins the lawsuits, the legislative floor fights, the hearts and minds of the bureaucrats, the desert can no more be "closed" than it can be "destroyed." Whatever the bureaucracy does to the swarming mobs with their fuel-hungry campers and motorhomes, the ephernerals will always inhabit this place, living somewhere half between flesh and spirit. Some of them ride motorcycles. The sun has just touched the horizon. It's time I left, or I risk getting the pickup stuck for the duration. I'll be back when my arm is stronger. They'll have to shoot me to keep me from coming ba ck. Now I remember why I still go to these en dless meetings. Lane Campbell .J .J UJ U a: ::l 0UJ .J >- a: a: ~ .._------------------_...

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