I sleep the sleep of the righteous and wake at first light to enjoy coffee and a glowing eastern sky.
My morning routine is interrupted by the hooting and cackling of a lone figure on the low ridge 100 yards behind and above me.
I answer with a hello but am ignored. The cackling continues, augmented now by arm-flapping and an unseemly hopping about.
This is the problem with camping near jeep roads: you are far from civilization yet near the uncivilized. My campsite was not visible from the road, which is usually protection enough: motorized tourists hate walking more than a few feet from their toys. The normal ones, anyway. This one had a bit more initiative, which is not really a trait I prize among the mentally unbalanced.
He kept up the display long enough to convince me he was no threat, just lacking in normal decorum and self-awareness.
But I needed to take a dump, and there were no bushes or any other cover nearby, one of the drawbacks of desert camping. I clenched my cheeks and waited for him to finish with his antics. Eventually he tired and walked back to his vehicle, leaving me in peace.
The first few miles of today’s walk cut across a corner of a state ORV park, a region striped with broad sandy arroyos. Most of the action is well to the south, where motorized heroes conquer the desert by turning knobs and pushing levers while sitting on cushioned seats. A constant low whine and clouds of distant dust mark the locus of the struggle.
Signs attempt to hold back the motorized hordesMy route rose out of this bajada and into a badlands of rounded clay domes, their smooth shapes a striking contrast with the jagged peaks behind.
No vegetation grows on these hills, not the smallest meanest weed. I walk for miles, wandering through creases and folds, their smooth bareness a cipher. There are a few sprigs on flat arroyo floors, but on the hills themselves, nothing. It is an alien landscape bereft of all earthly life.
Is it chemistry I wonder? Too much aluminum or arsenic? Not likely – plants are pretty good at detoxing soils.
Maybe erosion is just too rapid and nothing can root before being blown or washed away. That can’t be it either – the presence of grasses on sand dunes makes nonsense of that argument.
And then I round a corner and behold the mini-oasis of Five Palms (even though there are only four) and a more plausible answer takes form: it’s water. Or rather, the lack thereof.
The four palms of Five Palm oasisI bet this clay – unlike other clays- absorbs no water at all, repels it like hard-baked loaves. Water runs right off without ever soaking in. That impermeability also accounts for their shape.
Most badlands are all vertical flutes and folds. These instead are rounded and domed because they are eroded by wind, not water. They follow its flow across the land. They are shaped by a fluid that moves horizontally, not one that is pulled straight down by gravity.
The palms declare a fault in the clay caps. Water seeps up from underneath and presto! – life takes root. Give plants water and they can deal with chemistry and erosion and whatever other challenges the desert can throw at them. Water is all that is needed for life.
Shade is good too. There has been none in these lifeless hills and the weather has turned much hotter. My chromedome umbrella does a marvelous job of keeping the sun from frying me, but there is no improving on the deep shade of a palm grove and I sit a while and contemplate.
I leave the sinuous badlands for yet another Tule Canyon then join with the Arroyo Salado.
It’s 1 PM and the heat is insufferable. The dry oasis of 17 Palms presents itself and I set up for a siesta in the deep shade of a cluster of four wide palms.
It’s 3 miles by an easy jeep road to the highway and tourists drop by, most only slightly surprised to see an apparent homeless man sprawled out in the shade.
I offer to move, so as not to ruin their photos, but am told I add character to the scene. Good to know.
One man with a crew cut and a military bearing is perceptive enough to ask if I am backpacking. He tells me that going backpacking is on his bucket list, specifically the stretch of the PCT between US50 and I-80. That’s a pretty modest item for a bucket list but hey it is his dream and I am glad to encourage it and wish him well as he does me.
Several of the tourists inform me of a stash of water bottles but none of them take the hint when I tell them I have plenty of water to drink, but that it is warm and unrefreshing. This revelation should spur them to offer me icy cold drinks from the well-stocked coolers I imagine they have in their cars, but my yogi-ing powers fail and I am stuck drinking yet more warm water.
I told Dave I would be at the highway at 5 and so at 3 I get going up the glaring hot sandy arroyo again.
I walk; time and distance pass; I arrive at the camping area and sit next to the pit toilet, the only available shade. I drink more warm unrefreshing water and am done with this section of the Desert Trail. I’ll be back.
Waiting for my brother at the Arroyo Salado campground, I am not choosy about where I take my shade.