The White Heart of Mojave: An Adventure with the Outdoors of the Desert

by Edna Brush Perkins

They assured us that nobody ever came along.

We went to the Automobile Club; they received us with enthusiasm and told us about all the places California is proud of and how to get to them, but California seems not to be proud of the desert, for when we mentioned it our advisers became gloomy. They seemed to have no very definite information and were sure we would not like it. In the face of so much discouragement we hardly dared to ask about Death Valley and when we did, hesitatingly, the question was ignored. We simply could not get there, nobody ever went. The Imperial Valley seemed to be almost as bad. One of the maps they gave us showed a main highway from San Diego over into it, but they said that it was only a gravel road, mountainous and steep, and that we had better stick to the main routes. Evidently they had no faith in our skill as drivers, nor belief in our purpose, so we soon gathered up the maps and innumerable folders about resort hotels, thanked them, and went our way.

The collection contained no map of the Mojave. She had called us, but not loudly enough as yet, and now that we no longer saw her we remembered her terribleness more than her fascination. We would content ourselves with the Imperial Valley, at least for a beginning; but we said nothing more about it and started down the coast with every appearance of having a ladylike programme. In our then mood we hated the coast and were guilty of speeding along the fine macadam between Los Angeles and San Diego in our eagerness to leave it. We turned due east from the green little city on the shores of its beautiful harbor and headed for the desert. Our unsatisfactory interview at the Automobile Club had led us to believe that the Imperial Valley, irrigated or not, was a wild and lonely place, the desert itself, for it seemed to be surrounded by difficulties.

The road from San Diego proved to be good, presenting no hindrances not easily surmounted, and as we drove along it we told each other what we thought about the Automobile Club. Gradually the character of the country changed. A little of the prickly, spiky desert vegetation with which we were to become so familiar appeared. The round hills gave way to piles of bare, colored rock, the soil became a gravelly sand on which scrub oak and manzanita grew. The houses became fewer. In one place we had to detour and found deep, soft sand, nothing to the sand of a real desert road, but we did not know that then. The change was subtle, yet we felt it. The country took on the harshness that had repelled us from the train-windows. Being alone in it was at first a little dreadful.

After a day or so of leisurely driving we came suddenly to the edge of the valley. The ground fell before us, cut into rough canyons and foothills, two thousand feet to a blue depth. It was like a great hole full of blue mist, surrounded by red and chocolate-colored mountains. Nothing was clear down there though the mountains were sharply defined and had indigo shadows on them. The valley was a pure, light blue, of the quality of the sky, as though the sky reached down into it. We lingered a long time eating our lunch on a jagged rock, trying to pierce the blue veils and see the Salton Sea, a big salt lake which we knew was there with the tracks of the Southern Pacific beside it, the sand dunes we had heard of, and the town of El Centro where we were to spend the night. We could see nothing of them, only a phantasy of changing color, an unreality.

We found the whole desert full of drama, but the Imperial Valley is perhaps the most dramatic spot of all, except Death Valley, that other deep hole below sea-level which is so much more remote and so utterly lonely. The great basin of the Imperial Valley was once a part of the ocean until the gradual silting up of its narrow opening separated it from the Gulf of California. The bottom of the valley then became an inland sea which slowly evaporated under the hot sun, leaving as it receded a thick deposit of salt on the sand. At last the valley was dry, a deep glistening bowl between chocolate-colored mountains, a white desolation undisturbed by man or beast, covered with silence. For ages it lay thus while morning and evening painted the hills.

Then the railroad came with its thread of life, connecting Yuma with San Bernadino and Los Angeles. Soon a salt-works was built in what had once been the bottom of the ocean, and later an irrigation-system for the southern end of the valley from the Colorado River which flows just east of the Chocolate Mountains. The white desolation was made to bloom and, in spite of the intense heat of summer, has become one of the richest farming districts of California. But the drama is still going on. A few years ago the untamed Colorado River that had fought its way through the Grand Canyon and come two hundred miles across the desert turned wild and flooded into the Imperial Valley. It was shut out again, but it left the new Salton Sea in the old ocean bed. Its yellow waves now break near the irrigated area; it drowned the salt works. The Salton Sea is slowly vanishing as its predecessor did; in a little while the valley will again be dry and white and glistening.

The road descended before us in jigjags to the blue depth. It was a good road but narrow in places, dropping sheer at the edge, and steep. Very carefully we drove down, emerging at last through a narrow, rough canyon onto the sandy floor of the valley. A macadam road led like a shining band through the sagebrush. This evidence of civilization was strange in the surrounding wilderness, for as yet we could see no sign of life in the valley. The sand came up to the edge of the road and was blown into dunes between us and the new sea. There was nothing but sunshine and sagebrush and flowers. The flowers amazed us, for why should they grow there? There was a yellow kind that outshone our perennial garden coreopsis, and numberless little flowers pressed close to the sand with spread-out velvet, or shining, or crinkled blue or frosted leaves. We had to get out of the car to see them, and whenever we got out we felt the heat blaze around us. We were below sea-level and even in February it was very hot. The light was almost blinding, and a silver heat-shimmer swam between us and the mountain-walls. The mountains seemed to be of many colors which changed as the afternoon advanced. The sun set in a more vivid purple and gold than we had ever seen.

We lingered so long looking at the strange plants and flowers that twilight found us still alone with the desert. Only the white macadam band promised any end to it. Realizing that night was coming and we had an unknown number of miles before us we stepped on the accelerator with more energy than wisdom. The result was a loud explosion of one of the brand-new rear tires. We found the tire so hot that we had to wait for it to cool before we could change it, and the road hot to touch though the sun had been down for some time. We called ourselves all manner of names for being such fools as to try to drive fast on that sizzling surface. It was the first practical lesson about getting along on the desert.

Soon after that we came to an irrigation-ditch. Instantly everything was changed and we were in a farming country. El Centro is a hustling town with a modern four-story hotel. We wished it were not four stories when we learned that part of it had recently been shaken down by an earthquake, and especially when we experienced three small shocks during that night. The earthquakes themselves did not seem surprising, they were a fitting part of the weird experiences of the day. We felt as though we had been very near to the elemental forces of nature; we had been with the bare earth and volcanic rocks and strange plants that flourish in dryness, and felt the unmitigated beat of the sun. It was like seeing the great drama of nature unveiled, fierce and beautiful.