A Tale of the Mojave, California

 

I really should write this down before I forget, as it is a moving tale of daring and sorrow during the week I spent in the Mojave, doing preliminary fieldwork to prepare for teaching online this coming spring a class called Field Geology. I know, the title says “Field”, so trying to teach it online sounds like an oxymoron. But Field Geology is more a philosophy … a state of mind … a method that we geologists use when we go to the field, and I am convinced that with the right materials I can bring this state of heightened perception to the students. The key is having the right materials, which involves having aerial photographs, high-definition photographs of landscapes, outcrops, and rocks, and finally rock samples that you can make available to the students to see in hand-specimen and under the petrographic microscope.

Of course the university is not being very helpful on any of this. Like Trump trying to hang on to the bone in spite of his very clear loss to President Biden, the university is still hanging to the idea that Covid-19 will go away and we will be able to go to limited face-to-face instruction in the spring. The fools! The problem is that just as Trump is hindering President Biden to get on with the transition work, the university is hindering me from acquiring what I need to do a good job teaching this class online.

So I took matters into my own hands, and profiting from having the whole Thanksgiving week off I talked DJ and Ronnie into coming with me to the Mojave to get HD photographs, collect samples, and acquire aerial photography footage with a drone. Regarding the drone, DJ was the captain, Ronnie the pilot, and I was the Science Officer. Unfortunately we didn’t have our engineer with us (that would be Fabiola), so we were not as effective as we wanted; but the one run we managed to record was fantastic!

Ronnie the Desert Rat (aka El Chollito) was fabulous! He walked, ran, climbed, tumbled down the slope to his heart's content, and thoroughly enjoyed flying the drone, and shooting rockets. Camping comes naturally to him, and although the nights were chilly we slept very snugly in the pop-up Coleman camping trailer Faby and DJ have (which we lovingly call the Poppet). I had brought a generator, so we could run the heater for about 4 hours, just about right to keep the chill out of the air. The meals were abundant, the camp fire was fun, and we all had a good time.

But then DJ and Ronnie had to get back, and I still had one more project to finish, so we said goodbye, and pulling the Coleman trailer I headed into the vastness of the desert, for two days of daring geology. Now, I had to go to the other side of a playa lake, inside the Mojave wilderness preserve, so I thought about bringing along a bicycle, so I could ride across the playa to get to my mountain range. Well, that was a bust, because as much as we all have the image of a perfectly flat and smooth playa lake, the truth is that crystallization of salt causes the mud to heave up in the form of jagged mounds, much too big for the wheels of a bicycle. But I am getting ahead in my story.

When I approached the area, I found the road blocked by a National Parks gate. Rats! So I went around the mountain range, and away in the distance I spotted a cloud of dust rushing through the land, which to my trained eye indicated a gathering of Off-Highway Vehicles (or maybe it was the Forty Thieves chasing after Ali Baba). Sure enough, a few minutes later I encountered one of them Desert Rats, who told me that yes, I could get to the playa lake this way: “Just turn left at the crossroads, into the Mojave Road.” Of course there are no street markers in the desert, and the so-called Mojave Road was just one of an infinite amount of tracks which you had to feel more than see. But I have a sixth sense when it comes to directions, and pretty soon I approached the playa edge. I could see it, just across the small hump in the land. Fool that I am. “Humps” by a playa lake can only be sand dunes, and as I plowed right into the last of them I realized my error about two milliseconds before I felt the traction disappear under my tires.

I am not such a rooky to try to power through a sand dune, so I pulled out my shovel and started digging myself out. Fortunately with the Coleman trailer came a stack of plastic platforms, for leveling, so I used them to set a small path for the back wheels. It worked! For about 6 feet and then I sank back in the sand. I repeated the performance two more times, covering maybe 15 feet with another 45 feet to go, when out of a mirage a monster truck came along, and a grimy genie popped his head out of the window and with an impish grin asked me if I needed a pull. “Yes, please!”

After he had pulled me out of the soft sand, he informed me that indeed I was in the main Mojave Road, and that I could cross the playa with my vehicle, and keep going for another 20 or 30 miles to reach the highway. Perfect! All I needed was to cross the playa (another case where you feel your way through, rather than following a true path), and camp right there, from where I could take my bike to the mountains (but, as I have said, that was a non-starter). So I established my small desert camp, and seeing that it was only 1 pm and the sun was illuminating perfectly the one side of the mountain range, I started walking with camera on hand.

I can walk pretty fast, so between 1 and 3 pm I should have gone a good 10 miles, taking lots and lots of pictures, when I thought it would be prudent to start on the way back. OMG, what a slog were those same 10 miles, tired and without water as I was. By the time I got to my camp the light was fading, I was thirsty and pretty hungry, and the tasty duck and noodles soup I prepared were heavenly mana.

The following day I started way early, because I needed to go into the mountain massif to take pictures and collect samples. Man, It was much further than I had imagined, and things just didn’t quite look like I remembered them from 20 years back. But I had a great time, had plenty of water and food with me, and had it not been for the heavy weight of a backpack loaded with rocks I might have made a quick trip back home. But sometimes it is easy to get turned around in the desert, so when I came out of the mountains, heading straight for the playa, it took me a while to see that the landscape was not quite what I remembered. Weren’t some clumps of bushes near my camp? So I scanned the horizon and there, a million miles to the north, I saw my clumps of bushes. Nothing to it but start walking even faster, with creaky hurting knees and an aching back because of the heavy backpack, to make sure I could reach my camp before the sun set. It was touch and go, but I made it back just on the nick of time!

The following morning I packed the trailer and started back toward civilization. The so-called Mojave Road turns into a miserable track after you leave the playa, and my poor camper trailer was in danger of being swallowed by the deep ruts. It took me a good two hours to reach the highway, and from there I made a beeline across the desert toward Mojave, then Tehachapi, and finally Bakersfield. And it was on the miserable stretch of Highway 99 as it crosses Bakersfield that disaster struck! My brave little trailer, which had withstood the rough trails of the desert, popped out of the tow ball and crashed into the concrete of the highway. Fortunately the chains held, and I managed to keep the skid under control until I was able to pull by the side of the very busy highway, breathing a sigh of relief.

The rest of the story can be easily imagined. I contacted AAA, which took forever to send a flat bed and load the poor Poppet, to ultimately drive it to a repair shop where it will have to spend a few days waiting for a repair (and do you know how difficult is to find a shop that will take a trailer on Thanksgiving weekend?!). Eventually I will have to go down to Bakersfield to pick it up, but for the time being I was very glad when I pulled into my driveway in Waterford. All is well that ends well!