Look What They've Done To My Desert, God

From the East-West Highway, I turned south onto a narrow paved road, then west onto a rutted and rocky dirt road. This ended at a small parking area. No one else was around.

There was no trail to follow, so I went up a dry wash, hiking three miles over an alluvial fan and another three into a deep canyon. Here I had to scramble over dry falls and through boulder fields. My goal was the rare elephant tree, which is neither a tree nor elephantine. The guidebook said 100 specimens of the bush could be found at the head of the canyon.

I had made a late start and did not reach my goal by nightfall. I pitched the tent on level sand and cooked ramen as darkness enveloped me. I ate quickly, eyeing the canyon walls, looking for an ominous silhouette. On the way in I had seen human tracks, but they were old. The newer tracks were large, round and clawless: mountain lion. I did not want to remain outside the tent any longer than necessary.

My hunting knife gave only modest comfort. I figured I could win any fight, but at what cost? I knew a big cat would not bother me if I were in the tent.

Throughout the night, I kept the flap open for ventilation.

Periodically I woke to watch the stars and to listen. Nothing. No wind, no footsteps, no howls. At first light I broke camp and headed down the canyon, deciding not to climb the extra mile for a look at the elephant trees. They would be there next time.

Back at the car, I changed clothes and washed as best I could with a wet cloth. Refreshed and relaxed, I headed for the highway.

The spell of the wilderness was broken as I came upon choking clouds of dust and mechanical roars.

I was passing through the Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area, a large tract of desert land reserved for dirt bikes and dune buggies. On this holiday weekend, there were thousands of them. On either side of the road, set back 50 and 100 yards, were encampments of RVs, trailers and pickups, gathered in circles like the old wagon trains. The encampments stretched to the horizon.

For each street-legal vehicle, there were one or two off-road ones, and they all seemed to be in motion at once. Most were driven by children or teen-agers wearing helmets and garishly designed riding outfits. Some were driven by adults.

As I drove down the paved road at 50 miles per hour, keeping pace with me on the soft shoulder on the opposite side was a middle-aged man in a dune buggy.

He and the other riders were in a mad crisscrossing rush across the desert floor, dodging one another and the creosote bushes and making incessant noise. They were stirring up sand clouds and leaving deeply rutted trails.

I found it depressing.

The desert is a fragile place. Drive on a beach at low tide, and your tracks will be gone by morning. Drive on the desert, and your tracks will live longer than you will. It is said that a desert jeep trail, if left fallow, still will be drivable a century hence, so slow is the obliteration caused by natural forces in the land of little rain.

That was part of my complaint: the destruction of the land.

But it was more than that. I also was annoyed at the off-roaders for preferring what they were doing over the quiet and stealth of a hike, much as I would be annoyed at someone frolicking and making noise in church. Certain places call for reverence and silence.

I have never considered myself an environmental-ist, partly because so many people who use that label think the best way to preserve the environment is to get rid of people through contraception and abortion. Does that make me a conservationist instead?

Hard to say. I acknowledge that God gave man dominion over the earth (“fill the earth and subdue it”— Genesis 1:28), but, just as every right has a correlative duty, so that dominion puts limitations and responsibilities on man.

Can a Catholic, in conscience, defend all uses of the desert— or must he oppose some?

The Lord asked Jonah, “Do you do well to be angry?” (Jonah 4:4).

Do I do well to be angry at the off-roaders?

Am I right in sensing there is something profoundly un-Catholic about their use (or abuse) of the desert?

Job thought things over under his bean plant. Perhaps I will think this over under an elephant tree.

Karl Keating is founding director of Catholic Answers in El Cajon, California.