Back on the Road

[knip]

I was in San Diego last weekend, and after making the rounds of the friends and the bars and the messes, and after pumping back too many aspirin on two many days, I jumped in my car to see some Socal. I didn’t know exactly where I wanted to go but away, and that I wanted to see desert. My friend Art, after showing me every Irish pub in San Diego, and making me try each type of beer, told me to find the 67 and wind up it to Julian, and then just past Julian continue through the Cleveland National Forest and then take the Sunrise highway and descend into the desert. On my way to finding the 67, I succumbed and bought a map, as I was worried I might not make the desert before sunset.

Oriented, I explored. With Art’s directions for a general idea, I sought to improvise. Wildcat Canyon Road was first, mainly because it sounded good, and I had never seen a canyon before. It didn’t disappoint, but it wasn’t remote, either. I also didn’t see any canyons, not that I would really recognize one. I imagined sheer cliffs abutting on a dead end. I mean, I didn’t expect to see an ambush firing on covered wagons or anything, but I thought I would see something. But the rode unwound me with its winding, and my head was clearing up.

After a bunch of wrong turns onto closed fire roads that looked like perfectly good roads on the map, but were clearly goat paths in some countries, I finally found my way back to the 67 and into Julian. This town is about 4000 feet in altitude, and apparently they make the best apple pie around. I knew this because Art, and also the lady in the gas station with seven teeth who sold me the map, told me so. Another good hint was that in addition to the four restaurants, five antique shops, and three pubs, there were about 6 apple pie stores, all with lineups spilling out onto the sidewalk. Apparently San Diegoans know about Julian’s apple pie. I didn’t wait.

I took off, and made my way to the desert, planning to wind through forest. Tall brush was more like it; I have more trees in my back yard back home, to be frank. But the drive was pretty, with roads winding serpentine, confused switchbacks unable to make up their minds.

And then suddenly I was into desert. It surprised me at first, because I didn’t realize I was in until I was in it. It took me that long to figure out it wasn’t going to be like the Sahara. The aloe vera plants amazed me; back home we only found out about those things ten years ago, and here they were, everywhere. I checked out Box Canyon because there was a red dot on the map showing it to be famous for something. Disappointed again, I gave up the canyon search until the map told me about the next road leading to a canyon. But this was dirt and dust and sand too deep for my rental, so after some narrow escapes requiring my pedal to the floor to avoid bogging down, I gave up the canyon search.

Desert roads go on and on and are rarely boring. Just after I braked hard for the coyote running across the road, I saw this funny little bird crossing. It looked like a robin, but had a really long tail and a big spiked hat, but its body was tiny, and its feet moved really fast. I scratched my head for a few minutes trying to figure out what it was, until I realized it was a roadrunner. I laughed hard at the irony. Later I found some springs.

This desert had medium sized springs and small springs, all with campers and trailers parked around them like flies on a roadside apple core. I wondered if there is a set of folks who just love to go to the desert and hang out at springs, like the guys who always seem to park on the side roads behind airports to watch the planes take off and land. The only people I saw during the three-hour drive through the desert were the spring campers, a road crew (on a Sunday?), and dirt bikers, but only two groups of them.

The desert changed a bit as I drove through it, but it was subtle. The aloe left but were replaced by these tall spindly trees with just a few branches at the top; I found out what they were called but then I forgot. Gradually, and without me noticing it, these trees and the brush gave way to a more desolate desert, with just the tiny little patches on scrub dotting the leveled out plain. But the desert is a place of not too much until you see so much of it that you are overwhelmed. And I suspect this was a pretty small desert. By the time I realized this, my hangover was gone.

Driving back to San Diego west on the 8 with the setting sun staring at me and rising past mountains that looked like big piles of round red rocks I was glad I had done this. Two weeks before, in San Francisco, I had visited the City Lights Bookstore, where I bought beatbooks Junky, Go, and Dharma Bums, and had driven through Haight-Ashbury, which looked like any other head section of any other city. But I hadn’t gotten outside the city, and was pissed I didn’t get to Big Sur, which was where I really wanted to go. So by the time I made my desert run outside of San Diego, I had finished Junky, my first beatbook in a couple years, and was halfway into Go, and was ready for some road. On that drive west on the 8, as I was thinking desert thoughts, and the size of its skies, and its horizons, and the on and on ness of it, I realized I was just happy to be back on the road, both roads. So I wrote it down, and found myself back on a third road. I was distracted until the road tracted me.

[mnaz]

yeh julian,
4,000 feet you say?
never knew, and I attended a museum there in '99,
next to the usual calm of such a brilliant place to live,
right before I crashed into next door, into el cajon,
(and i mean that metaphorically).
and anza-borrego trailers at the springs,
strewn about,
literally everywhere.
metaphorically.

[Dave The Dov]

Good to hear that you're making the rounds out there!!!! You should have gotten a hold of "Big Sur" as well!!!!
_________________
Greg Hastings Tournament Paintball MAX'D