There’s snow on Telescope Peak right now. We saw it from the spot we hiked to in Red Rock Canyon State Park this afternoon, my first visit in years. (The Raven and I sat for a time where Zeke and I sat one night long ago.) And then a few hours later on the road near Randsburg we saw it again, snow mantling the highest point in Death Valley National Park, eleven thousand feet and change. The peak looks down to the flat at Badwater, 282 feet below sea level.
The western Mojave is oddly green right now. Snow settled on the ground last week and melted slow, feeding the grasses and the exotic filaree, the tickseed. The snow on Telescope Peak may melt this week or not until March. Some of the meltwater will run down Hanaupah Canyon toward the floor of Death Valley, will mingle with the hypersaline groundwater there. And some will run off toward the Panamint Valley through Surprise Canyon, which holds one of just a few perennial streams in the DVNP.
What do you see when you look at this photo of Surprise Canyon? A place to sit and rest? Rugged walls on which to clamber? I see an oasis, a cool moist island in a sea of creosote and desert varnish. A desert hiker might see rescue in the water.
Off-roaders see a place to drive.
It takes less time and effort to walk this canyon than to force your way through by vehicle, leaking motor oil and antifreeze into the water, digging up silt beds and damaging the plants. The only possible reason to drive the canyon instead of walking it is to express one’s contempt for the canyon as it is.
Each vehicle winched up those falls is a mechanized “fuck you” to the desert.
The canyon has been closed to vehicular traffic for some time, and earlier this month the Interior Department reaffirmed the ban after appeals from off-roaders. The off-roaders are predictably upset. On one 4X4 discussion board, the first post in reaction to the decision threatened violence:
Its looking like we are going to have to break the law and just on the trails we want to and do it armed.
They will defend their claimed right to literally run over a desert oasis at gunpoint.
It gets clearer and clearer to me, though I fight the festering conviction in my heart. Two species of human, Homo sapiens and Homo phobiens. One tries to understand the world it lives in. The other indignantly defends its god-given right to shit where it eats.
Rape would be an even more accurate metaphor. Assholes.
Well, I typed up a long comment and it got eaten when I tried to preview it. Here’s a condensed version:
This talk about species is a little scary.
Which of the two do you suppose is responsible for more environmental destruction? For instance, where would you classify Edward Teller?
Depends on your definition of sapience, I suppose. If you define it as “wisdom” as distinct from “intelligence,” then I just don’t see much of that type of sapience anywhere.
(Reference here to “A Canticle for Liebowitz,” which I’m 2/3 through.)
I prefer to think of these egregious examples (like the Surprise Canyon video) as just the usual crap humanity spreads around, albeit a highly visible, obnoxious, self-centered, and pointless type of crap.
And on a lighter note, how about this alternate classification:
Homo sapiens yahooiensis
Homo sapiens technorati
Homo sapiens granolii
(Damn, wish I knew how to get italics in these comments. Not looking very sapient now, am I?)
Beautiful photo. I see age in it, the long life of rocks and water and wind carving it. Re the species… human nature is to shit where it eats, or close by. Socialization is about learning to shit elsewhere.
That kind of thing makes me so goddamned mad. A couple of years ago, I spent a springtime photographing off-roading destruction to trails, forest, fish habitat, and a colony of rare ferns on a large tract of land under the jurisdiction of our city’s forestry department. When I went to them with the photos, they fiddled around not wanting to do anything about putting up gates to protect the forest. Finally, the fire department got involved after some turkeys set fire to vehicles deep in the woods, almost starting a forest fire. Now there are gates. I obvious don’t “get” the attraction of destroying natural areas.
Holy crap. I am in awe of the stupidity ... and suddenly, painfully aware of what a bad pacifist I am. As in, seeing red. Where’s ELF when you need them?
You people need to get a real life
Most people who enjoy motorised
recreation are responsable hard
working amaricans.
The more lands the public we are
locked out of, the more you will
see revolt. Freedom is not free,
we will take our lands back
The Dude
It’s people who enjoy winching a jeep up a flowing creek that need to get a life. And we’ll be fighting you for every acre of OUR public lands, which belong to all of us, not just motorheads.
The vast majority of the public enjoy a quiet walk in nature, while only 10 to 15 percent engage in hardcore off-roading.
More than 50 percent of ORV users surveyed say they go off-trail. “Responsible”? Bullshit.
Without taking anything away from Larry’s very fine response, let me just say that what’s-his-name came back with a bad-faith response. That’s unsurprising, of course, given the usual run of ORV-er thug.
But enough to have me ask that we refrain from feeding him. His comments will be going away as soon as I—or other moderators here—see them.
I am a responsible off-roader and love our land, that’s why I ride dirtbikes. I really try to understand your enviro-nazi way of thinking and I just don’t understand it. I could understand you guys getting pissed off if we were trying to burn new trails in Yellowstone NP but c’mon, you are trying to take away trails from us that have existed for 50 and sometimes over a hundred years. We only have a small amount of land to ride as it is and you try to take more away from us while OHV use is going up? If you were intelligent you would be helping us educate our riders and helping to keep our areas open to ride. There are so many areas we DO NOT ride, and shouldn’t ride for that matter, and we are ok with that. Leave the current trails alone already!
As a dirt bike rider, I know that the traditional lands we paid to have trails on with OHV DMV fees is being taken away from us, mile by mile, without any replacement mileage to compensate. As a result, OHV’ers take their sport deeper and deeper away from prying eyes and the potential of being caught in the act. If the OHV DMV fees wouldn’t be raped to pay for gates and instead was used to maintain and establish riding trails near populated areas, then the issue of wild lands being damaged wouldn’t even be an issue. Want to keep OHV riders out of those out-of-the-way remote areas? Then help them keep their OHV funds and help them force the government to use those dollars on establishing riding areas closer to developed lands.
When you make a human in America, that human needs diapers, which are made of plastic and fill landfills. You need to trample more land to have a larger house. You need to burn fuel and pollute the air to drive the new human to school. The new human needs clothes, whose raw materials have to be manufactured in pollution-creating factores and farmed with pollution-causing tractors on single species farms placed over clearcut wildlands. The new human is going to want technology made of all sorts of toxic plastics, eventually its own car which requires roads which literally pave right over previously wild land. Then that human will want to clear out another patch of nature to have its own house, so it can make even more humans to repeat the cycle.
I am an avid off-highway driver. I don’t have children and have ensured that I won’t have any in the future. If you have children, don’t you DARE tell me where I can’t drive, hypocrite.
That is an awesome video of ‘old school’ 4x4s tackling the trail. Your editorial makes it seems as if the off-highway are tearing up the trail. I don’t see any of that in the video. Looks like responsible use to me. If you were to look closer I’m sure you would find each of them also carried trash bags to haul out what others left behind.
I was fortunate enough to be able to drive that trail when it was still open for the public to use. By the way did you know that used to be a road, accessible by most vehicles? Guess what, the off-highway community did not change that, mother nature did. The off-highway community loves the tranquil outdoors as much as you. We should work together to keep ALL public lands open to ALL public users.
That video contains some great information about getting your rig up Surprise Canyon. I’ll be sure to use it once it’s opened up again for moterized use. Its sad to say but I’ve seen it time and time again; when a route such as this is closed to everything but foot traffic it turns to crap! Folks hiking through leave their trash and waste behind while those in the off-road community participate in regular cleanups and keep areas looking beautiful. Yes, the vast majority of off highway users are very responsible, while the less than 10% still need to be educated.
Imagine how people feel every year when someone comes along and says, “I don’t care if you live in this country and pay your taxes, we’re going to shut down the public lands that you help pay for because we don’t like the way you play. We don’t care what you think because we’re here to make the world just the way we want it to be.” Sucks, huh? We need to support the organizations that fight back in order to show how we feel and get our voices heard. Folks on dirt bikes, horses, dune buggies, rock buggies, pickups, Jeeps, and any other forms of recreation that use public land besides simply hiking. We all want to be able to do our certain type of activity, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be allowed to. It really comes down to sharing, respecting others and cleaning up after ourselves.
If you’re out wheelin’, remember things like staying on designated trails, taking your trash home, and picking up any you see. Set a good example for others!
Yeah, yeah, and the tortoises greet you as liberators.
The off road community does more to clean up the areas we like to use than any “green” organization. While you seek to limit use, so that you needn’t be bothered by others, off roaders seek to maintain the land FOR ALL TO USE. Your short sighted, narrow minded rant is nothing short of ignorant exclusion. Replace off roaders with blacks or homosexuals and you would undoubtedly be called a bigot or a homophobe, which, for some unknown reason you chose to label the off road communtiy. It is sad to see that someone cannot be accepting of other peoples way of life. Generally, these trails are no more than 20 feet wide, leaving the rest of the land, in it’s entirety for non vehicular use. You blindly judge those with differing opinions, you give examples with no data to back them up, no studies to prove your points. You are a 4xphobe and a bigot in the most basic sense of the word.
Thanks!
When I read this article, I can tell that the mindset of it is supposed to be attacking offroaders. This is a very ignorant and narrow minded idea. While you say that all offroaders destroy nature, this is completely wrong. I am an active offroader, and care more about the scenery and nature than a lot of hikers do. I pick up trash I find and keep the area as beautiful as possible. This article is clearly and plainly an attack to all offroaders without any proof or cause. And I’m sure that the use of profanity in this will not help get your ideas across, as it is very rude.
This was taken from an above comment…
“And we’ll be fighting you for every acre of OUR public lands, which belong to all of us, not just motorheads.”
You say that you will be fighting for OUR lands, which you say belong to everyone, not just “motorheads”. But the fact is, this land does not belong to “motorheads” anymore, because people like you took it away from us. The term “public” is being taken away from us by the mile.
You people seem to forget that the minimal impact offroaders cause is not even one fraction of the damage from what is being caused by a paved road. I don’t see why there is such a big issue with the “damage” offroaders cause. We clean up litter, we organize clean up crews to go and beautify the area, and we respect the environment.. sometimes more than hikers. Most of the fires I have seen, (I live in northern California) were caused by hikers. They went out and left their campfires smoldering, and let the forest catch fire. I am not bashing campers, but I am saying that we BOTH need to work our issues out, so BOTH of us are happy in the end. Closing down the area to only 1 side is completely unfair.
Again, as I see the state of mind of many of your comments which include swearing and personal attacks, I can clearly see that you are unable to see the reasoning that us offroaders wish to do. However, all you seem to do is continue to blatantly attack us and claim we destroy everything. So I think many of you need to rethink your ideas and take another look at yourselves.
Please, lets BOTH work this out together. Thank you for your time! :)