I’m driving one of my favorite roads, the drive to Borrego Springs, and now I’m starting the stretch running seven miles from the mountain town of Julian through the hamlet of Banner, “the Banner Road.”
Whoo boy! Lots of curves-–what great driving! This is not a road to take in a hurry. I love to luxuriate in those twists and turns, lean into them, as well as watch carefully where and how I’m going. Of course I’m the worst person to get behind when a local in a pickup wants to make speed. And they usually do.
Today, though, I encounter few other cars. Still I wish I could go entirely at my own speed, the entire way. To be fair, there are pull-offs, but never are they where I wish. Where I spot spreading filigrees of fungus on boulders, or the elegant agonies of a long dead tree, bark exposed, contorted into a weather-beaten sculpture. No place to stop when I want to look long and hard at the star of a dudleya blooming pale green-white, or strands of a dying yucca spread like a sea anemone. What pull-offs that do exist are seldom where I want to read the mineral strata in a rock, or this time of year, luxuriate in native ceanothus blooming in bursts of soft blue. Really, I guess, what I want is to own the road.
Damn. A truck’s hard on my tail. After a couple of curves and trying to find somewhere to safely pull over, I manage to find a small shoulder. The truck flies by. Thank goodness he’s gone!
All those curves, all those rocks and trees and views! I want to just stop in my tracks at will, for as long as I want. It’s true, the way back up offers me some vantage points in the form of pullouts which aren’t easy of access on the way down. And I will take full advantage of them.
To read this corkscrew of a road I speak of, look at the upper left quadrant of the map at the top. All those twists and turns—and then look what happens to Route 78. Once you’ve descended (about 4000 feet), a long ribbon of asphalt stretches straight ahead, then recedes in the rear-view mirror. So much fun to arrow forward for a change! After a few mild “up hill, down dale” stretches, the ground flattens out.
As for vegetation, rather than the massed green of early spring, now sand reigns. So do desert plants, all neatly spaced a few feet apart, as though some invisible gardener had dropped them from above; ocotillo, cholla cactus, agaves, creosote, neatly assorted. Each one claims only needed territory. Here the road offers numerous easy pull-offs, so I can easily appreciate the expanse around me, and in the distance, the oddly-named Cigarette Hills. I’d have called them mountains.
Eventually I come to Scissors Crossing—a name I love—the anything- but-right-angled intersection of Highway 78 and S-3. Turning east (a left turn), I take S-3, Yaqui Pass Road, and there’s a grove of tamarisk trees. With their reddish, crenellated trunks and soft gray-green fronds, they refresh the eye.
Soon, now for the pass: another stretch of serious twisting and turning. I grind my way uphill. Thank goodness for those guard rails! White/gray/brown gritty sand furnishes soil for ground-hugging plants, but I’m too busy navigating to get more than an overall impression.
On this morning’s trip, however the pass surprises me; I used to find it dicey indeed, with the almost vertical surfaces constantly off to the right. Today I just sail ahead and the distance through seems short.
Now for San Felipe Canyon, with rock walls on both sides. Here are thousands of huge red or gray stacks of rocks, apparently arrested as they fell. Often they’re striped with groins (veins) of other minerals. Somehow plants grow around them, in fact magnificently: yuccas topped with dense clusters of ivory blossoms and barrel cactus decorate the hillsides.
The road begins to straighten some and I feel a lovely sense of having “passed through.” Steering eases. Ocotillos bend and groups of cholla cactus crowd the roadsides as though offering up welcome via friendly hugs—but I know their teddy-bear appearance is entirely deceptive.
Driving’s so easy now! Straight down a long gentle grade and into the desert. I’ve made it, to the town of Borrego Springs, home of Anza Borrego Desert State Park.
An ocean of rock and sand lies ahead, a gift of land I’ve been presented to explore. Words, ideas, spring to mind: spread, expanse, wide scale, vastness. I remember the old term “land grant” though in a very different sense from early explorers and settlers who were so favored. Perhaps, over many visits, I will someday come to deserve a sand grain’s worth.
Strange that I write in such detail of the road—instead of our destination, the desert itself. Four days of relaxation lay ahead of me, long looked forward to. Does the drive really deserve all this detailed description and attention?
Yes! For I live in an urban area choking with traffic; the road to the desert is something else entirely, what I consider “real driving.” In this great and wonderful territory, driving frees my mind. I enter into all the differentness and feel it through the tire treads. The road leads me on.
That evening I scribble down as much as I can in my journal, using words as my preserving camera, my inked scrawl standing in for the line of road. I’d driven all these sights and feelings and sensations into memory, so that later (and you) I can take them again. Each curve or steep-banked twist birthed a sentence; each rock or plant, a phrase or simile or description—and the miles and words add up to the journey, to travel.
