by Bill Graves
3
Fossils in the Desert
Borrego Springs, California
The 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.
4
The Search Begins for Main Street
Borrego—Palm Canyon Campground
An 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?”
“Some are still there, some aren’t…I guess, really, most of them aren’t.” All went uncomfortably silent. I could even hear Billingsly’s chain jingle as he walked.
Then Jerry said, “What you are asking—or what you are saying, really—is that we ran our local merchants out of business. That our loyalty was to the almighty dollar and not to our neighbors. Let’s put it this way—and I am defending my folks here—their loyalty was first to their family. There were just so many dollars to go around. They went where they could get the most for them. OK?”
It was too dark to see Jerry’s face. Perhaps it was just as well. I was enjoying my second martini and a relaxing walk. I did not want this conversation to get too agitated or thought provoking.
“Guess it’s basic economics, the free-enterprise system at work,” I replied, maybe the most innocuous thing I have ever said.
“Exactly!” Jerry almost shouted. “The town is still there. Main Street didn’t die. There is a generation growing up there now—actually, my generation—renovating whole sections of it. Fact is, I’m really anxious to get back there to see it.”
June spoke up. “Well, I grew up in the town that has the Wal-Mart and the fast-food places, too. They all came at once. Then came the people from California with tons of money to buy up ranches and drive up the price of everything. The merchants loved it, especially the real-estate folks.
“Frankly, the new people didn’t make good neighbors. They stuck to themselves. They were almost invisible, a cultural black hole that added nothing. And they brought big-city ideas and got mad because we didn’t want to change to accommodate them. Why leave a place for a new place, then try to make the new one like the old one? I never could figure that one out.”
“Would you go back?”
“To visit? Sure. My folks are still there. But I don’t know what we would do there,” June admitted. With a grunt, she poked Jerry in the ribs. “They wouldn’t know Starbucks from instant, right?”
We were close to my motor home. I made a graceful exit. Jerry and June had hit the right buttons. Their timing could not have been better. They had convinced me. More then ever, I want to be there. I want to see for myself what is happening to the small towns of the West. All of them, with or without a Wal-Mart.
Charles Kuralt once described those communities: “where Third Street’s the edge of town. Where you don’t use turn signals, because everybody knows where you are going to turn. And if you write a check on the wrong bank, it covers you for it anyway.” Those places where the highway enters town and becomes Main Street because it was there first. That’s where I’m headed.
Out in the desert, where the lights of our campground faded into darkness, other life began to stir and remake itself.
5
Oh-My-God Springs
County Road S22, California
The gods were pushing me toward Salton City. Were I driving a car, it wouldn’t happen. But my big motor home has the aerodynamics of an orange crate. A strong wind usually works against me. Head-on it’s bad, broadside it’s worse. But today, “it was a following sea,” as I used to hear in the Navy. The wind, combined with a slope in the road, was keeping me at a consistent thirty-five miles per hour, with the engine idling in neutral. At six miles to the gallon, it was a gift from the gods.
As if spooked by the image of sinking beneath the ocean, the gods left me the instant I descended below sea level. The free ride was over. The zero-elevation line runs almost due north and south just west of Salton City, near the golf course and Oh-My-God Springs.
The Salton City golf course can be seen from the road, but not easily. It blends into the desert, since that is what it is. It has no grass. What identify it as a golf course, really, are the flags marking the nine holes on the brown greens.
Oh-My-God Springs is even less conspicuous than the golf course, but then it’s a mile off the road. It’s probably named for the first utterance of some bird-watcher who stumbled onto this seedy nudist hangout while looking for a great roadrunner. “Oh my god! Will you look at that!” was the full sentence, I’ll bet.
Other than running around naked and lolling in a hole of hot-spring water that is condemned by the county health department, what else this crowd does depends upon whom you talk to. In Borrego Springs, I heard five different stories from three people. Actually, I don’t think it’s any den of ini quity, just a ghetto-resort without a landlord.
I made a turn that looked like the right one. It was one of those roads that, in the desert, is a road because it has been driven on more than once. It immediately dipped into a deep wash. Coming up the other side, there it was: a thermal oasis and a ragtag collection of old trailers, converted school buses, and random junk. Cars and pickups were missing hoods, bumpers, and occasionally a wheel. Seats had been pulled from some, maybe for a person to sleep on. Nothing appeared durable or permanent.
They looked to be an antisocial bunch. At least they had set up housekeeping a good distance from one another. I saw no activity. Nobody worked or wandered. They just sat in front of their crude quarters with no clothes on. It was hot, though. These people were in no way related to the organized nudists who spend family weekends at health spas and earn a living fully clothed the rest of the week. This scruffy bunch was a long way from earning anything.
This was a sight indeed, a site of insignificance. No stone pyramid with a historic marker at this spot. Just a weathered sign warning of a health hazard.
Tragically, I suspect the road ends here for some. I mean the big one, not the mere tracks in the sand on which I drove in, and fortunately, would drive out again. My good fortune was not just that I could leave but that I had a place to go.
I parked and walked to the thermal spring. It was surrounded with tall vegetation. Propped up on one side was a plywood windbreak. The hot water bubbling from the ground was diverted into a hole that someone had dug. Around the top, the hole was lined with flat rocks.
Gathered were a half dozen well-sunned people, some in the muddy hole, some sitting on the side. Everybody had long hair. Empty Old Milwaukee cans floated in the brown water. No clothes in sight. Not even towels.
An ample woman, half in the hole—I would guess her age somewhere between thirty-five and sixty years—was tracking me with sunken eyes even before I got there. No one else, though, seemed to care about the arrival of a newcomer. She asked me, “Do you know how to fix a tellyvision?”
“No, don’t even watch it much,” I replied,
“Well, I ain’t watched a bit since Friday. Quit dead in the middle of The Flukes of Hazzard.”
One of the guys said quietly, “It’s Dukes, Dummy.”
“Well, it quit in the middle, and I’m after someone to fix it.”
A head of hair moved from the side to the center of the hole. It was a husky fellow in his late thirties. His arms and hands were half the normal size. Waist-deep in the hole, he moved to the edge, bent over, and picked up a pack of cigarettes with both of his tiny, deformed hands. Tapping the pack on a rock just once, a cigarette popped out. He put it between his lips without touching it with his wet fingers. Using a butane lighter, he lit the cigarette in a single, fluid motion. He had this procedure down to an art form.
A man with his back to me turned his head my way. “Did ya bring the beer?”
“Forgot it,” I said, assuming an honest answer wouldn’t work.
“The guys in helicopters never showed, neither. We is gettin’ really low.
”
Dummy said, “There ain’t no helicopters. You thought that up, just like always.”
“They was here…when was it? They brought us that whatever it was. We played that good shit-kickin’ music you like. Remember? Where the hell was you?”
Dummy didn’t answer. She was sinking in the hole.
“They promised they’d come back and bring some more.” Pointing at me, he said, “I thought he was one of ‘em.”
He rose on one elbow to face me, surfacing multiple tattoos, “You sure you’re not one of ‘em?”
“Sorry!”
He studied me for the longest time, then sett led back in the hole.
I drove to Salton City, depressed by what I had just seen. For centuries, people have gone to the desert to lose themiselves. The desert makes it easy. It happens almost as a matter of course.
Unable or unwilling to play the cards dealt them, lost souls drift from one shuffle to another in a desperate search for better ones. For many, the hunt invariably ends here in the desert, where the days are warm and life is undisciplined, unpoliced, and simple. In the vastness of the desert, a man can walk away from life yet still never take that last step.
“There is always hope,” you might say. But only if you look for it. The ghettos, the mud holes, the pits of the desert are filled with those who have quit looking.
6
The Story of the Salton Sea
Salton City, California
The windows at Johnson’s Landing all face the Salton Sea. So does the bar. I took a stool between a lady and a couple of older guys. I was offered a Salton martini: a glass of beer with an olive. Too early. My breakfast had not yet setttled. Besides, the fresh coffee smelled pretty good when I came through the door.
Beginning at 6:00 a.m., Dorianne Fries sees anything that happens around the lagoon in front, though not much ever does. She has been the morning waitress here for a decade.
