Plenty of Room to Run Wild

This is where people from Los Angeles come to do what they can’t in front of the neighbors.

They blow things up. They shoot porno flicks. They drink beer at dawn. They rip up hills on motorbikes. They stage cockfights and rave parties and soar through the sky in homemade contraptions.

And most notably, they drive worse than any road-raging commuter on the San Diego Freeway.

“We had a vehicle hit a Porta Potti at 200 mph,” said Barry Nelson, chief U.S. Bureau of Land Management ranger for 3.2 million acres stretching from Los Angeles County to the Nevada state line.

Southern California has an open backyard like few other urban areas in the world, with enough space to try about anything the human mind can conjure up. And El Mirage Dry Lake, 30 miles east of Palmdale, has become ground zero for all the pent-up energy, wacko experiments and illicit desires of lowlanders over the hill.

This place reflects a schizophrenic relationship with our region’s arid interior, an expanse that is seen as wasteland and sanctuary, fragile ecosystem and pockmarked artillery range.

These visions converge at El Mirage thanks to a combination of proximity and geology. The cracked clay lake bed, lying on Los Angeles’ back doorstep, stretches five miles by two miles, a flawlessly flat surface that to the naked eye quickly dissolves into a liquid haze. From the sunken desert floor, trails wend into a vast expanse of barren hills, beckoning all kinds of off-road motorists.

As a result, this 24,000-acre slice of federal land in San Bernardino County draws more types of users than any other patch of desert in Southern California, officials say. Land sailors dodge motorcyclists. Gyrocopters buzz RVs. And yuppies put their Beemers to the test.

“You can do whatever the hell you want out here, and no one will ever get in your way,” said a drunk 20-year-old punk rocker named Charlie late one recent night.

And Charlie, who spoke on condition of anonymity, did just that. He had just illegally blown a rattlesnake in half with a 12-gauge shotgun and was trying to impress his girlfriend with its moving corpse: “It’s still twitching. Feel it. Feel it.”

There’s no speed limit, and often the government officials in charge can only stand by as human folly unfolds, sometimes tragically. About a dozen people die in accidents every year.

“We can try to appeal to their sense of judgment or we can wait until bones are sticking out of their skin,” Nelson said.

Every year, more than 110,000 visitors--crowds of leathery desert veterans and wide-eyed novices--come creaking up Interstate 15 in old RVs and trailers. As they head 10 miles west out of Adelanto, down the washboard access road and onto this raw swath of earth, many feel they are shedding all those structured confines of city life.

They are taking an age-old psychological path that tears them away from the “smear of humanity and suburbanization,” said Jeff Kovich, research manager with the U.S. Geological Survey who studies the California desert.

“It’s deeply embedded in our culture that the desert is a place to draw away, to be free, to be an American. Who’s going to see you? And if they do see you, they’re probably doing the same thing.”

Paul Faulstich, a professor of environmental studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, laments the ecological destruction that comes with some of the heavier uses. But he says the area offers people a needed venue to satisfy primal desires for open land that may date back to humanity’s origins on the African plains.

“Our lives are so regimented, so full of answering to someone else,” Faulstich said. “When you go out there, it’s as much of a spiritual releasing as it is a freedom to do whatever the hell you want. Not only can you see a hundred miles, but you can drive your urban assault vehicle across it.”

Motorcycle gangs like the Vagos and the Hells Angels used to rumble into El Mirage at night for drunken, drug-tweaked orgies. Today, gangbangers come to try out their weapons or burn stolen cars in the nearby canyons, officials say. Rangers busted up an organized cockfight in May. And all sorts of young groups--ravers, skinheads and clean-cut college students--fan out to isolated spots among the creosote bushes to party.

Hollywood also loves the convenient desolation of El Mirage, which is one of the most filmed places in the desert, according to the Inland Empire Film Commission. Among the scores of film permits issued this year for the dry lake were ones for a Metallica video, a Microsoft ad, a third “Jurassic Park” movie and a film called “Blow.” Even the most dedicated couch potatoes have visited--through car commercials, like the one showing a Nissan Maxima careening around the lake bed and halting in front of a single flower.

George Callaway, who lives on the lake edge and runs land speed trials there, has seen it all in the half-century he’s visited or resided here. Called the “mayor” of El Mirage, he has driven his souped-up 1929 Ford roadster more than 130 mph across the flats. Still, as he was cruising around the lake one afternoon several years ago, he saw something that makes him shake his head to this day.

“Here’s this dolly with no clothes on,” he said, beginning a story about a pornographic movie shoot he happened upon. “And she’s got 40 people standing there watching it.”

Gunmen and In-Line Skaters

Only rangers, who patrol El Mirage and beyond, witness the full scope of humanity that can fan out across the Mojave.

Nelson remembers the 115-degree day he headed out to a more isolated lake bed northeast of El Mirage. Alone in the middle of the lake, decked out in camouflage, a man sat with a cache of guns and his van in the blinding midday light. Surrounding him were little plastic molded men, like lawn jockeys in battle fatigues, which he was methodically blowing away with a rifle.

The ranger was spooked. He questioned the man, who, though strange, was doing nothing illegal. Nelson left.

“He was under siege, I guess,” Nelson said. “It was one of those contacts I just wanted to end with a graceful exit.”

Usually, though, the less pathological people come to El Mirage. Even in August, when the furnace-like temperatures scare the heavy crowds away, the lake bed can be a manic mix of recreational ardor.

During a recent summer afternoon, a lone in-line skater emerged from the blue warp of heat, an absurdly solitary figure cutting across the hardpan. As she slowly got closer and the warm air set dust devils spinning, one could see she was wearing a red bathing suit--and a wide grin.

Her name was Susan Werner, 38, and at home on the crowded Venice boardwalk the Los Angeles resident can’t swing her arms when she skates.

“This is total freedom,” she said later. “It’s very surreal.”

To the east, a student filmmaker from Occidental College was shooting the climax of his movie--crouching on roller skates while being towed backward by a Volkswagen. “The film is a postmodern piece about struggles, destinations and mind journeys,” said director Bryan Lasseter, 21.

Lasseter needed just the right shot of a young fair-skinned actor riding a red bike across a desert. Checking out various Web sites on the Internet, he found that El Mirage was the most otherworldly place so close to the city. “My actor is an L.A. pretty boy, and he needs to be back as quick as he can.”

Soon a westerly wind kicked up, and a group of land sailors began tacking across the lake on their three-wheeled land yachts. They swooped back and forth at 50 mph, keeling up on two wheels, sails flapping, shooting past the burned-out skeleton of a dune buggy that had caught fire and exploded near their camp. Land sailing is one of the few quiet, peaceful sports on the lake.

Hours after nightfall, Charlie and his punk rock friends--a tattooed, pierced and spike-headed lot--arrived in the area. These are the type of high-impact campers that make the more genteel land sailors cringe, driving from Chino and Riverside to get wasted and shoot guns where no one will bother them.

Desert Ecology Is Fragile

Their journey had been interrupted by police who pulled them over in Adelanto and questioned the young men and women about whether they had thrown a bottle, which they denied. One of them was arrested on outstanding warrants, and one of their cars was confiscated.

Finally, the group pulled up to an abandoned foundation with an old chimney and some tamarisk trees, just off the lake bed. While they ravaged a Joshua tree for firewood, one kid stepped on a rattlesnake and was saved by his Doc Marten boots.

Then the haphazard shotgun blasts began. The fire was lighted, and the first keg of beer was tapped. An assault rifle emerged from a trunk. A toilet paper roll was obliterated, and the business end of the snake was soon roasting in the campfire. “We’ve got dinner!” said one. So, with the stars etched hard in the sky, another night passed at El Mirage.

Desert use isn’t totally unregulated. The Bureau of Land Management enforces laws and performs the delicate task of balancing environmental concerns with people’s recreational needs.

They try to do that by designating specific off-road vehicle areas, one of which includes the El Mirage lake bed. Such a designation prohibits riding double or without helmets on motorcycles, but generally allows all types of vehicles within its boundaries.

Still, riders are always lured by that next ridge or open valley, and new tracks are constantly being cut across the hills. Environmentalists say this threatens one of the most fragile environments on Earth.

Shrubs can live thousands of years. But they don’t readily sprout up again when trampled by someone’s Humvee or motorcycle, biologists say. The dirt is entwined with a fungus that prevents erosion and blowing dust. Yet a single off-road vehicle--indeed, a single footstep--can undo that for decades, they add.

“A typical 4-by-4 pickup truck damages 1.25 acres of land for every four miles driven,” said Kovich of the U.S. Geological Survey. “You multiply that by the number of vehicles out there and the number of miles driven, and the impact is huge.”

Then there’s trash and the age-old perception that the desert is a waste dump. “Everyone tells me they bring more trash out than they take in,” said BLM ranger Bob Hastey. “I guess I must be talking to the wrong people.”

Lately, Hastey said he has discovered plastic carcasses strewn from Barstow to El Mirage--old computers and fax machines that apparently have been blown to smithereens by frustrated owners. Overall, he said, the BLM has removed more than 1,000 tons of trash from the desert around Victorville and El Mirage in the last five years.

There actually are laws out here.

In the off-highway vehicle area that includes the dry lake, shooting is strictly forbidden. Outside the area, only shotguns are permitted. Bombs are a felony anywhere, raves are banned and dumping junk or destroying the local plants and animals is strictly prohibited.

Rangers say they made 26 arrests last year on outstanding warrants and drug offenses, and issued 120 citations, mainly for vehicle and firearms violations.

Karl McNeil got written up in August. He brought his family out in the RV to ride dirt bikes.

But one night at El Mirage, Hastey ticketed him for setting off illegal fireworks. “We do mortars. Got ‘em in Vegas for $300,” he said.

And so authorities keep a tenuous grip. When no laws are broken, they can chuckle at these odd manifestations of freedom.

“There was once this couple shooting skeet,” Hastey said, savoring the memory. “Naked.”