TIME’S ISLAND The California Desert <i> by T.H. Watkins (Peregrine Smith Books: $16.95, paper; 96 pp.)</i>

The California desert is an acquired taste. Driving through it, with thoughts fixed on Mammoth’s slopes or the tables of Las Vegas, one is often more attracted to the tacky gas station-fast food stops than to the bleached landscape.

But anyone who has stepped away from the highways, even just to stretch and yawn, knows how quickly rapture can set in. The stench and clamor and visual confusion of the Southern California megalopolis fade; the desert silence becomes tangible, the clear sky hypnotic, the clean air intoxicating.

Under such a spell, folks get protective. But because the California desert is subtle in its seduction, newly inspired nature lovers have often gone on to worry about threats to the Grand Canyon and other more postcard-perfect desertscapes.

Now the California Desert’s time has come, and the voices of protectors are rising up. With “Time’s Island, The California Desert,” T. H. Watkins puts himself in the first rank of the defenders of this relatively neglected 39,000-square-mile landscape.

The editor of Wilderness magazine, Watkins has known this turf since he was a kid, growing up in San Bernardino Valley with the Mojave Desert as his stomping ground.

Leading readers through the geography, biology and history of the land under the spell of which he has fallen, he is an informed and engaging guide, the book a readable primer for those who haven’t stopped to see the desert yet. When he slips into the first person to examine where his feelings and the landscape intersect, there’s a sense that the ghosts of Edward Abbey or Aldo Leopold are scrambling along beside him over the boulders.

In these passages, and when Watkins tackles the politics of preservation, such as the controversial California Desert Protection Act, the book--illustrated with photographs that capture the diversity and moodiness of the terrain--becomes the sort of coffee-table propaganda Abbey sometimes conspired with photographers to create.

Other people who think it’s their desert, too--ranchers, off-road vehicle enthusiasts, miners, developers--don’t really get a fair shake. But this is the sort of book where objectivity only gets in the way of heartfelt truth.

Let the motorcyclists and Bureau of Land Management respond with their own nice pictures and eloquent prose. They’ll find this quietly passionate book hard to match.