Into the Land of the Desert’s Rose-Colored Mountains

Nothing eases the stress of metropolitan crowding and gridlock like a drive through the high desert, while it lasts.

On a recent weekend I had agreed to make talks at a luncheon on Saturday in Spring Valley Lake, near Victorville, and at a dinner Sunday in Bakersfield. Rather than drive up to Victorville, come home and then go over the Ridge Route to Bakersfield, we decided to stay overnight in Spring Valley Lake and take the high desert and the Tehachapi pass to Bakersfield.

It was a felicitous decision. We found ourselves sandwiched safely between two storms. Snow had temporarily closed the Cajon Pass and covered the Victorville Valley the day before. Another storm was forecast for late Sunday.

The luncheon was held in the Spring Valley Lake Country Club in a room with glass walls overlooking the sparkling lake on one side and the club’s fresh green links on the other.

The growth was incredible. Hundreds of comfortable new homes were clustered in several tracts throughout the valley. Like all of suburban Southern California, from San Diego to Santa Barbara, they seemed to have been wrought into being by an explosion. The houses all seemed to be a combination of Moorish, Spanish Colonial and Victorian, with turrets and cupolas, bay windows and glass loggias. Other signs of civilization are Victor Valley College and the inevitable shopping malls.

We had dinner with Ruth and Al Theodos in their home and spent the night in the guest room of Stan and Sylvia Lemmond--both bankers--in theirs, a large house among others in an equestrian tract with room for horses.

Many residents are retired, but many others commute to San Bernardino or Redlands, some all the way to Los Angeles. Ruth Theodos, who has had a colorful theatrical and literary career, is a ringleader among those trying to bring culture to this desert outpost.

We left at 9 o’clock for Bakersfield, not knowing what the road would be like. For 30 miles the highway north was two lanes, requiring an alertness that atrophies in years of freeway driving.

But there were few cars. Now and then we would find ourselves quite alone, with no other vehicles in sight.

It is reassuring to find oneself completely isolated from other people. There was almost nothing in sight but sagebrush. Now and then a Joshua tree rushed past. The cones of low desert mountains ringed us on the horizon, rose- and rabbit-colored. It was an exhilarating wilderness.

Civilization suddenly popped into being, like an excrescence, at the juncture of California 58. Gas stations, a bar, cafes and a long row of sheds offering kitschy souvenirs: Tijuana North.

The desert soon swallowed us up again. California 58 is a divided highway that runs across the desert through Mojave, crosses the Tehachapis and goes all the way down to Bakersfield without a stop.

Just east of Mojave we passed a large wrecking yard. Thousands of shattered vehicles lay crunched up together over what must have been three or four acres. A monument to civilization’s excesses.

Mojave was hardly bigger than the desert town I knew as a small boy. I saw no tracts of brand new houses. Perhaps it had not been discovered yet or was too far for commuters. Perhaps the new developments were just out of sight.

It took just four minutes to traverse the town, at a reduced speed.

But Mojave is civilized. We passed a McDonald’s, a Wendy’s, a Carl’s Jr. and a Kentucky Fried Chicken, not to mention numerous nonfranchise eating spots.

Perhaps Tehachapi is the last hope of our lost frontier. We pulled off the road to drive down its main street. We had been there for a picnic years ago and found no McDonald’s. I thought then that it must be the last town in the country without one. It still is without one, unless it’s off the main drag.

How can the town survive and support a teen-age population?

The day was bright, clear and pleasantly cold. A mile-long freight train with five engines crawled up the mountains, heading for the famous Tehachapi loop. Hundreds of wind turbines covered the mountain tops, some turning, some not. (I’m told they can’t be called windmills because they don’t grind anything. Pure pedantry.)

We came out of the mountains to see the neat green and purple squares of the San Joaquin Valley’s agricultural checkerboard. Just short of Bakersfield our car was suddenly enveloped by a cloud of swirling dust. We could not see the car ahead of us.

Next day we read in the Bakersfield Californian that at just about that minute, and at just about that place in the road, seven cars had collided in the dust, and several persons had been injured.

The next day a snowstorm obliterated the Tehachapi Mountains.