October
4, 1998
Highway 395 from Ridgescrest to Bishop
Last Monday,
I left on a trip. This might not seem remarkable if it weren't for a couple
of beliefs I hold about myself. The first one is that I'm never not on
a trip. I live on the road, like a latter day Odysseus. My only permanent
residence is in cyberspace, and my home is the Phoenix,
a wheeled contraption known in these waning years of the 20th century
as a motorhome.
The other
tenet I claim to hold is that life itself is a trip, a journey every one
of us is on, whether we stay in one place or put wheel to pavement. The
only thing static about existence is a naive belief in security and stability,
as though there can be such things in a world that blows tops off mountains
and is itself hurtling through space at speeds so fast that our bodies
are built to ignore the movement altogether.
So how did
I manage to leave on a trip if I was already traveling? I guess you could
say it was like the Pope's hats. He wears one inside, and he puts on another
when he goes outdoors. If it rains, he's got a third one, and a tall pointed
one for official duties inside cathedrals. One way or another, he's always
got a hat on, and sometimes he's wearing three.
I was already
on a trip because we all are. My husband and I added a layer by deciding
to live in a motorhome and by keeping the wheels rolling for over four
years. Life was a double trip, even when the wheels slowed and we found
ourselves on a short tether, linked to Los Angeles by a
project that was accomplished more easily with convenient access to
people and companies rooted there.
For nine
months the project kept us on a short lead. We shopped at the same supermarkets,
made appointments we knew we'd be in town to keep. Most indicative of
all that we'd slipped into a "to and fro" lifestyle was the
undeniable fact that we had to say good-bye when we were finally ready
to leave. By the time we actually rose out of the Los Angeles basin on
Interstate 15, I felt like the lid on a can of old paint. I'd been pried
loose.
"We're
heading north," we told people, which in Southern California begs
the question: "Going up the coast?" And I thought we would follow
that spectacular track that traces the edge of the continent. Highway
One is the stuff of legend, a road whose glory will live long after the
inevitable shift and crunch of tectonic plates render it as invisible
as Atlantis. I can see the titles now: "The Lost Highway of the Far
West," and "The Road to Paradise: Fact or Fiction?"
It wasn't
until people started asking that I started to consider the other possibilities.
"We could go north on an inland route," I said to Mark. "Why
not 395?"
Highway 395
passes Los Angeles eighty miles to the east, connecting southern California
with Canada by way of Nevada, Oregon and Washington. To pick it up from
Los Angeles, you have to climb the San Gabriel Mountains and descend to
the desert beyond. The road shoots straight up the Owens Valley, an arid,
flat expanse that once boasted a lake big enough for steamboats until
the city of angels reduced it to a puddle.
Highway 395
would probably have the same boring reputation as the long, flat stretch
of Interstate 5 that links Los Angeles with San Francisco, but it escapes
such labeling because it's the road used by skiers, hikers, gamblers,
fishermen, and mountain climbers to get to such sporting and gaming Meccas
as Mammoth, Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, Reno, and any number of other renowned
vacation destinations. Highway 395 is the road of holidays and honeymoons,
the corridor leading to the best summer vacations I ever spent. When I
was a teenager, my parents took my siblings and I backpacking in the Sierras
every July, and no similar expeditions have ever been as wonderful. Can
you beat being sixteen and basking on the edge of an alpine tarn? Freeze-dried
succotash will ever be ambrosia.
With such
destinations as Tuolumne Meadows and June Lake on your mind, it's easy
to zip past the signs and towns on the valley floor, stopping only for
a root beer in Big Pine, a burger in Bishop. Mark and I decided, as we
began our trek up the road to wonderful, to pause a little at lesser known
spots along 395, and we began our moseying in Ridgecrest, a high desert
town on the edge of China Lake Naval Weapons Center.
Ridgecrest
was gearing up for a fair, which meant that the RV park next to the fairgrounds
was chock full of vendors. It seemed to be the only campground in town,
so we headed north on the road to Death Valley. We hadn't gone far when
we saw a Bureau of Land Management sign pointing to something called the
Trona Pinnacles.
"I've
never heard of the Trona Pinnacles," said Mark, and I was equally
unaware of their existence. After only a mile of washboard, the pinnacles
broke the horizon. They were irregular points jutting out of low hills,
and from a distance they looked like cities Martian gnomes might have
built.
When
we reached the spires, they towered over us. Now they seemed like the
huge serrated teeth of some leviathan whose jaw was buried here eons ago.
The sun was fast disappearing behind the jagged horizon, and we watched
it turn the tall stones orange and purple. Before the light disappeared,
we parked the Phoenix between two titanic canines and slept soundly in
the monster's mandible.
Rising
before dawn, we returned to Ridgecrest, where we had an early morning
appointment to meet Millie Michel, who has lived in the desert since 1971.
She's known for rescuing injured and homeless desert tortoises, and we
were eager to meet her and her special charges.
Now that
I've done it, I can't imagine a more lovely way to enjoy a cup of coffee
than in the company of five baby tortoises. Exact replicas of their five-gallon
parents, the month-old hatchlings were the size of yoyos. Finding themselves
outside the plastic tub they called home, they rambled about the table,
searching eagerly for an escape route to the larger world. "I'd let
them outside," Millie explained, "But the big black birds will
eat them." In a year or so, the babies will be tough enough to survive.
In ten years, they can breed. They might live to be a hundred, especially
if they stay away from cars.
"People
actually swerve to hit them on the road," said Millie. Her grandson
recently rescued a highway casualty, a thirty-year-old female who'd suffered
a cracked shell and a broken leg. Thanks to Millie's care and the innovative
techniques of a local veterinarian, Heather doesn't limp any more, and
her shell is unobtrusively patched with silicone mesh.
Bidding
farewell to Millie, we headed north once more. We pulled into a rest stop
near Coso Junction and parked next to a small RV whose smiling owner emerged
to say hello. "I've been on tour in an RV since 1991," said
Russ Richard. "I'm a paraglider and hang glider pilot."
"I
have an e-mail account I can access from any Web browser," he said.
"I use public libraries, cyber cafes, Kinko's, and sometimes even
university libraries. Oh, and of course friends and relatives. My e-mail
account is free, and access is free or cheap. I don't even own a computer."
While we
were chatting, another couple approached. "I've seen you on the Web,"
said the man, "And now I get to see you in person."
Was it really
less than three years ago that social activists worried that Internet
access would be available only to the wealthy, and that "http://"
and "URL" were gobbledegook? It's been a fast thousand days.
As we continued
moseying up 395, we caught sight of another intriguing Bureau of Land
Management sign. "Fossil Falls" this one read, and suddenly
we just had to take a look. A short trip up a dirt road and a short walk
brought us to another remarkable opus of nature, a black rock canyon sculpted
by an ancient volcanic flow.
As we continued
our beeline up 395, the Sierras rose on the left, pristine under a sparkling
blanket of early snow, most of which had fallen the night before. At Lone
Pine, we turned left on Whitney Portal Road.
The
road wound first through the stark red rocks of the Alabama Hills, and
then rose sharply into the mountains. The Phoenix One crawled up the switchbacks,
bringing us at last to the awesome spot where Mount Whitney rises directly
over the road, framed in the pine trees of Whitney Portal, its peak shrouded
in clouds. We walked through the forest near the Mt. Whitney trailhead,
descended once more to the valley floor, and drove on to Bishop.
Virginia
City, Nevada
October 4, 1998
