Mojave Road — Crossing the Desert on the Native American Trail
Two dogs and a truck on the 4x4 trail
The half-buried posts mark the entrance to the desert. By their look, they have been here as long as the sands. Two wires lead off each post and vanish into the ground ten feet away. If the wires once made a fence, they lost to the winds and no longer served their purpose.
But the sign is new. “Mojave Road,” it says in a government font. “Proceed at your own risk.” I do. I will drive this 4x4 trail for the next two days, the old trail connecting Choctaw and Chumash Native American tribes, once a lifeline, now only entertainment.
I stop and deflate the tires, watch the pressure drop from 32 to 20 psi. The tires splay under the weight of my Tacoma truck and hug the dirt. This is the right pressure to glide over loose dirt, rocks, and sand drifts assailing the trail.
I am in the sixth week of this ritual, deflating tires to leave the asphalt for the empty off-roads of the American West. Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington… Thousands of miles of dirt roads and only hundreds of paved. All states west of the Rockies now, but Arizona and New Mexico. I’ll drive through them next week on my way to the Midwest.
So far, the road is good. It is packed with wheels of day visitors in city SUVs. They drive a few miles to achieve the “off-roading” badge, then turn back. Their U-turns mark the beginning of entropy. From there, overlanders continue on the decaying path to explore the world on the backsides of mountain ridges.
I am driving thirty miles an hour. Great speed. It feels like flying on the narrow trail the width of two tire tracks. The cacti are sparse and set back from the road. I can see for miles ahead. There is little risk going at this speed.
In my side mirror, I see a receding contrail of dust whipped up by my movement. I know it settles behind me, but from my vantage point, it is infinite, extending to the beginning of history. I indulge this thought, another of my illusions of permanence.
I see no other desert contrails. I am alone but for the white contrail in the sky. A jet is flying to some place of industry, full of salesmen on their way to another empty conquest. I feel I am moving fast, but to them, the pilots, I am a slow-drifting land squid spewing ink behind me. The jet mocks me by speeding away and leaves me in my own dust.
Fine! I yell at it. Get there fast. Sure! You are missing the cacti, the pretty rocks, the ravines, the fractal patterns of the dried riverbeds, and everything else you are zooming through, you blind overachiever. I laugh at it and the rows of salesmen. Then at myself. You fucking idiot — a walking caravan of Mojave tribes of centuries past would yell this at your truck. I slow down.
I drive over a high plateau born of geological stretching. The back of the tectonic plate detained on its emergence from the mantle, legs behind the speedy front, stretching the middle like an indulgent belly, taught like a drum, but with telltale stretchmarks of ravines and deep cracks in the earth. I see those to the sides, but in front, I see the unblemished smoothness of the desert.
A pyramid ahead! I still think of the ancient trekkers and imagine it is built of skulls, a toll taken by the desert for the passage through these deadly lands. But those are head-sized boulders piled six feet high by human hands. Tire tracks and remnants of old fires are all around. What kind of altar is this?
I drive on. People away from their cities make me nervous and afraid. It is safer with the coyotes in the depths of the desert.
It is almost dark. I pull over, find a flat spot, and open the rooftop tent. It unfolds itself and builds my home atop the truck in a minute. The ladder drops. I set its feet on two flat rocks, check that each ladder rung is locked, then toss my bed — a pillow and a sleeping bag — into the tent door.
I crack a beer and stand watching my dogs. Bear, the elder, trudges around, fighting the indignities of old age but still curious about the immediate world. I sigh. He has only a little time left, the old gizzard. We have given each other fifteen years of company already. I am happy to watch him trot free and piss on a rock like he owns it.
Bela Fleck is a four-month-old pup. We are only getting to know each other, but I know we will be loyal friends.
The dogs are dusty, as am I. I can feel the grit between my teeth, behind my ears, in the armpits, and in my crotch. On the off roads of the American West, you must make peace with the dust. It is a constant blanket and a staple of your diet. I hate it, but I will miss it at my office desk in the city.
I shiver. The gentle movement of cooling air chills my upper body, but the radiant heat of the rocks warms my legs. Rocks hold on to the sun’s warmth, protesting the night. In the morning, they will hold on to the cold of the night, protesting the day. They are the reactionaries of the desert, refusing to move with the change. If given a mind, the rocks would be middle-aged men.
Time to go to bed.
The sky is the light shade of indigo, and the morning is trudging ahead. I make my coffee and sip it in the rooftop tent, my feet hanging on the ladder. I feel the morning chill. I feel the dogs inching closer. They are seeking my warmth.
A few sips of coffee and the sky is light blue. I can see the Mojave Road meandering east. I will drive it today. I see a smaller trail, straight as an arrow, running away from it and towards the hills at the rim of the desert. I will run on that path, I decide, fifteen miles today in preparation for a marathon a few weeks away.
Native people walked these paths, I think again. For centuries, they plodded their wears east to west and back, trading goods and culture and building communities. I imagine a caravan of them walking on the path, but they morph into the camel train of Lawrence of Arabia. I know little of Mojave tribes. My mind is filling in the blanks with the pollution of Hollywood. I will read about their culture when I cross the Colorado River into cell coverage. I will.
I leave the dogs behind in the truck. One is too old, the other is too young to run the distance. The temps are perfect for the next two hours.
I run towards the distant mountains. Or are they nearby hills? I can’t tell. The emptiness of the desert erases the markers of scale. It can make the small seem big, or the far seem near.
After thirty minutes of good pace, I don’t seem to have moved. I am on a desert treadmill, running fast but staying in one place—Alice before the Red Queen. I now know those are mountains at the end of the road. They are too far for me to reach today.
I find the running flow and tick off the miles. It feels easy today. The air is cold and fresh, the path is firm, and my body is light. The Saguaros drift by, time passes unnoticed. Suddenly, I am in the foothills. They are like sand dunes, flowing with the wind but made of rock. The wind carved them over millennia.
I turn around and run back on the desert treadmill again. For an hour the distant speck of my truck is getting no closer, then suddenly I am at the door.
Life imitates the desert, I decide. Somedays, you wait five hours for five minutes to pass when waiting for a thing, then in a moment, it is five years in the past, then fifteen, and you have creaky joints worn by the sands of time.
The young dog leaps for joy. The old one greets me with a dismissive glance. I shoo him off the seat onto the dust of Mojave. Go run while you can, old man.
