sojourn to the Santa Rosa Mountains

summer wildflower scene...

This, right near a rugged and narrow, steep-edged drive along the ridgeline of a remote and close mountain-top....the southwestern sentinel of the greater Palm Springs area and matriarch of the new Santa Rosa-San Jacinto Mountains National Monument - almost touchable yet foreign and far-smote....


So...what is this? A lightning fire stricken tree on a high-mountain dirt road, at 9,000 feet, preaching the words of a long-gone desert prophet (and, by the look of it, recently refreshed by a latter-day wannabe with new paint...

So, it was, on June 19th, two days before the longest slant of summer solstice proper and accordingly a day filled with excess and long-limbed light, I took a drive and day trip to the Santa Rosa Mountains on a back dirt road, from 100+ degrees in the June glare to a cool, and potential thunderstorm-ridden cumulus cloud filled sky. I had invited a friend from Palm Springs and corraled the dogs - quite easily - from the yard and into the backseat of my Toyota RAV4. Amidst our pleasant conversation, I was suddenly careening back and forth on a long round of infamous hairpin curves of Seven Level Hill, which rises from Palm Desert at 200 feet above sea level to Pinyon Flat, 4,000 feet, in 20 minutes. It's also the road on which the crazy cliff-side car scene for the comedy, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" was filmed, and the location of many car and motorcycle mishaps, i.e., people swinging a little too wildly and looping off the downhill side of the road. Bighorn sheep have been sighted numerously cresting the sharp and imposing rock cliffs, and there's a pullout where local kids park and drink beer and throw their emtpy bottles over the side.

And suddenly, at a topoff, and the road relaxes out. After following a flatter road for awhile that still uncurls and hugs mountain hips, Highway 74, a sharp turnoff onto the relief of dirt and sharp switchbacks, ruts, rocks, and bumps, I relax into my usual dirt-road repetoire, negotiating the frequent hazards with more ease and zone out than on the freeway....a very familiar traverse for me but a bit more shocking to my friend, a city-sort who's never been on a road like this before and protests when I work the cell phone to see if I have reception while barely avoiding a deep, car-sucking rut....I'm due, at any minute, to be interviewed via phone by a writer from the Inland Empire Weekly newspaper about my recently-edited desert anthology and also for my involvement in the Inlandia Institute, a nonprofit promoting all of the arts in Riverside & San Bernardino counties. No missed calls, so I grab my quart-sized bottle of Perrier (yeah, I wish it were a big fat beer, but...not today), look back to make sure the dogs aren't car-sick or jumping out of the open windows, and reach for a bag of snacks - ah, the relief from desert air-conditioning; the cool mountain air!

Yes, I assert, to reassure the concerned tremor in his voice, I've never had an offroad wreck although I have been stuck in some pretty rough spots but not on this pretty darned mellow, by comparison to other trips in my old VW Van and my white Jeep, jaunts. I CAN drive on roads like this with just a few fingers loosely manuevering the steering wheel and a thumb on the stickshift, a bit of foot on the top clutch, and still look around me, and still talk. I'm in charge, and this is my version of autopilot. The Toyota isn't 4WD, but it doesn't know it, and I'm taking full advantage of the naivete to "pretend." It's a good 10-15 miles and more than an hour to go till our destination, and no going more than 20 miles per hour at best the whole steep and demanding road. Uphill, at least. Coming down (I don't tell my friend this) will be an entirely different matter....

It's an awesome day and for a newbie, and even me, a landscape that insists on slowed-down travel and time, by dint of its remoteness and crag of accessbility, even while challenging the best off-road driver to be entirely in tune with the roughage or terrain. Yes, it's an adventure, especially, I concur, for my friend, who's taking this all in the expected awe and with, understandably, a bit of apprehension. I know we're okay, and I emphasize that we're not likely to see any psycho-killers on the loose out here, although I did once see a man walking down on a very hot day towards the highway, no water or supplies in hand.

Tarah and I managed to decipher, through a bit of mutually understood Spanish, that his friends, on a Tequila-blasted campout the night before, had left him at the top, and taken off. We gave him gatorade and pointed him towards....the road to Temecula. It's nuts and it's fun, to do this kind of thing, and doesn't cost much more than to fill the gas tank and pack the ice chest with cold drinks and a bit of food. It's scenic and it's memorable, but most of all, this, to me, this haphazard driving in a personal synchrony with the unpaved and barely-mapped and on the outermost ringtones of cell phone range, is what it means to relax.


a humanesque yucca forest gesticulating on a flank, as viewed from the car window, on a very long and bumpy dirt fire road, at around 5,500-6,000 feet in the chapparal region, just past Pinyon Flat, Santa Rosa Mountains


Shasta (left) and Brindle "Brindie Boy" (right) enjoy the top of a rock at Santa Rosa Spring, partway up the mountain


summer wildflowers emanating from bark, near Santa Rosa Peak, 9,100 feet


the same area as the flowers - who would believe that the top of Santa Rosa Peak, in arid southern California, situated on a narrow ridgeline with drop-off desert views of the Palm Springs/Joshua Tree area to the northeast, and the remote Anza Borrego Desert to the southwest, with temperatures searing into the 100's, could profer this green-tree sanctuary. Sort of like something out of coastal northern California!


Santa Rosa Peak, 9,100 feet, just north of El Toro Peak at 9,300 feet (fenced and covered with radio towers)...the chimney is remnant of burned-down cabin of "Desert" Steve Ragsdale, who lived there part-time and wrote about the experience for the old Desert Magazine, based in Palm Desert and quite famous in its time (1930's-1950's.)The gnarled trees at top tell the story of the intensity of effort they've spent to surivive harsh peak-top winters, massive windstorms and winter blizzards...while people bask in the January sun in the deserts below and tap little white balls repetitively into holes, an almost-vertical drop straight down to sea level on both sides...