White knuckled, I swerve and swear my way through Los Angeles gridlock, my usual que sera, sera jettisoned at takeoff. The small talk that Joie, my strawberry blond and freckled co-pilot, offers from the passenger seat barely permeates my furious fog. I appreciate her efforts to ease the tension, but my agitated amygdala renders me incapable of polite reply. Heading north on this weekday morning, away from the frenzy of downtown LA, means this traffic must end at some point. I’m hellbent to find an open road—and to leave the madness of the so-called civilized world behind.

Only when we pass the looming Twisted Colossus at Six Flags Magic Mountain, more than 30 miles from downtown, do the lanes begin to unsnarl. My fingers release their death grip on the steering wheel. My shoulders slump and a great sigh escapes with a shudder. The relief is akin to taking off shoes a full size too small. We’re leisurely wending through the San Gabriel Mountains now, those snowcapped peaks that backdrop the LA skyline only on postcard-perfect days, now all dusted in cinnamon powder and dotted with sagebrush. I glance at Joie. Her grin is as wide as mine, from ear to ear.

My mood has taken a U-turn since this morning when I read that the Secretary of Interior Zinke, charged with safeguarding our natural treasures, intends to sell them off to the lowest bidder. His thinly-veiled ploy to trade off the scenic beauty and essential wildlife habitat preserved in our national monuments for the scars of petroleum and mineral mining inspired a cursing streak of which I am not proud. Who thought it would be a good idea to put this fox in charge of guarding the wildland hen house? My heart, already overwrought by incessant news of social and environmental crises, begged for respite. I snapped the laptop shut and paced.

I caught myself eying my stash of “medicinal Chardonnay,” and not even this calamity is an excuse for that kind of escapism. Not at 8 a.m., anyway. I texted Joie, the friend who’s always up for a spontaneous escape for sanity. We hit the highway an hour later, determined to enjoy a national treasure while we still could.

Crossing over the Tejon pass now, I’m tempted to lift my hands from the steering wheel, roller-coaster style, and careen down the mountain, shrieking as we go. Only the slew of semis boxing in my little eco-car keeps my hands on the helm.

Once we hit the San Joaquin Valley floor, we leave the interstate and its steady stream of big wheelers behind. It’s a straight shot west to the tumbleweed town of Maricopa, passing through a patchwork of neat agricultural squares, alternating spring green and khaki tan, on the way. A right turn onto Highway 33, nicknamed the “Petroleum Highway” by the California legislature, delivers us into an eerie moonscape. Acres of dusty brown earth, seemingly devoid of all natural life, populated by thousands of alien-looking pumpjacks, mechanical rocking horses, bobbing like old boozers going in for drink after drink. This is the vast Midway-Sunset Oil Field, where humans have been extracting thick crude since the great gusher of 1910 when nine million barrels of oil erupted from the ground over eighteen months.

This is familiar territory for me, much as my self-righteous ego burns with shame to admit it to Joie. I worked as an environmental compliance attorney for a major operator here some years ago, I tell her. I am as proud of the environmentally-responsible work I did—helping to ensure that the oilfield operations complied with a myriad of laws and regulations—as I am appalled to have enabled this desecration. Returning today reminds me of the travesties I mean to forget. I recall the money-grubbing Secretary Zinke, and I step on the gas.

I veer left onto the two-lane that meanders through the gently-rolling Temblor range. The pillaged landscape dissolves in the rearview mirror, along with my conflicted feelings. Snaking along the winding road, no other vehicles in sight, reignites our sense of adventure. And purpose. From here to the ridgeline, we encounter no other human, no signs of life at all but for the wizened oaks and swaying grasses. We stop by the side of the road to Instagram this miracle.

Back in the car, we corkscrew out of the round-shouldered Temblors, then the road suddenly straightens, as if plopping us into western Kansas, and shoots us to our destination: the 250,000-acre Carrizo Plain National Monument. The largest sanctuary of native grassland in all of California, it’s a gem in the trove of our natural treasures. More than forty species of endangered, threatened and rare species, including the endangered San Joaquin kit fox, San Joaquin antelope squirrel, giant kangaroo rat and blunt-nosed leopard lizard, call it home. Tule elk and pronghorn antelope roam at dusk. Fairy and brine shrimp delight in vernal pools. Golden eagles and hawks soar overhead. Sandhill cranes and mountain plovers winter here; or they used to, before long years of drought.

Not even this exceptional ecosystem is immune from the incessant lust to extract dollars from nature. The Carrizo Plain is on Zinke’s list of monuments under consideration for the auction block. A flick of his pen could bring the kind of habitat ruination found in the oilfield on the other side of the Temblors.

Motoring along the park road, still the only car on the road, we gasp at our first glimpse of a snow-white expanse, a sparkling gem against the buff and blond grasses. This is Soda Lake, the gift of both the winter rains and the San Andreas fault, which traverses the monument’s eastern border. More than a million years ago, a river flowed through this valley before its outlet was blocked by uplift along the fault. Nowadays, whatever moisture falls in the brief rainfall season of November to March finds no exit and accumulates in the seasonal pools of Soda Lake. When the incessant sun of the long, scorching summer arrives, the sky reclaims her gifts. The waters of Soda Lake evaporate, leaving behind salty minerals eroded from the local mountains, resembling fresh-fallen snow.

This is not Joie’s and my first experience of the Carrizo Plain. In February of 2017, we joined the throngs delighting in the rare bonanza that had sprung to life in a rare year of abundant rainfall. When the average annual precipitation measures in the single digits—and extended droughts have become the norm—fourteen inches of rain in a few months is cause for euphoria. A multitude of wildflowers sprang up to join in the jubilation, transforming the drab hillsides into a living Monet masterpiece. Bursts of canary and coral abutted long floes of lavender. Azure waters pooled in Soda Lake, in deep contrast with its snowy banks.

Such abundance is but a distant memory on this mid-winter afternoon, just one year later. Barely an inch of sustenance has fallen this year. The hillside palettes of wheat chaff hues and the dry bed of Soda Lake—as well as the dearth of visitors—attest to this year’s lack. No throngs assemble to witness the dessication. We despair for the local critters if the skies don’t deliver plentifully. And soon.

But we’re here to experience a different treasure of the Carrizo Plain today, so we make the hard right toward the Goodwin Education Center, then jounce along a dirt and gravel road. My compact car ill-suited for such rough terrain, we check for loose fillings after we land in the nearly-empty lot. Finding none, we head inside where we’re startled to discover two other humans, a lone ranger and a single park visitor. Just a couple hours out of crowded LA, and we’re already accustomed to being the only humans. We effuse pleasantries, like tourists surprised to find another American in a distant land.

I hand our permit to visit the sacred site ahead of us to the park ranger, secretly pleased that I’d had the presence of mind to apply for it. Out of consideration for nesting birds and native traditions, the window for “self-guided tours” of the Native American pictographs here is a few months of the year. Somehow, I’d managed a moment of composure, in the midst of my rage, to verify that window wouldn’t close for a couple more weeks, before running away from home.

The ranger jots down a code and returns the permit to me. “You’ll need that number to open the lock on the gate,” he advises. I tuck it back into my bag, then we browse the few displays about wildlife and the pictographs in the two-room visitor center. But we’re eager to see it all for ourselves, so we hop back in the car. At the locked gate, Joie reads the secret code aloud as I align the numbers on the padlock. I tap my fingers on the steering wheel while the rusty swing gate creaks open. We bump along another rutted washboard road to its end and then ditch the car. Snapping selfies, we chuckle at our cheek in making this brazen escape from weekday responsibilities.

My skin erupts in goosebumps when I read the trailhead sign announcing our passage onto sacred Native American lands. The broad dirt path directs us toward a great horsehoe-shaped sandstone mound rising from the plain. We amble along until we reach an opening, a deep gash carved by that long-ago river which bisected this outcrop into a colossal fortune cookie. We pause to examine the yellow ochre and burnt orange lichen dotting the mottled gray sandstone towering over our heads. Lichens being symbiotic associations between fungus and algae (or bacteria), they have transformed hard rock into habitat for some 700 million years or more. I pause, hands pressed together in prayer, to honor such long-term cooperation. Then I heed the call of the mysteries lying within.

Like nervous kids entering a haunted house, we creep into the interior: wary of what lies ahead and eager to be surprised all the same. Immersed in darkness, our eyes demand several minutes to adjust to the shadows of the womb-like interior. We peer into the dark cavities under the overhangs, wishing we’d thought to bring a flashlight. We’re tempted to explore the depths of the hollows, but the terms of our permit prohibit leaving the path. From this vantage, nothing makes any sense, and my heart sinks to realize that I have no idea how to identify the pictographs we came to see. Without a background in archaeology or antiquities, what made me think I’d understand what I see here?

Suddenly, a figure materializes on the wall before me, as if by reagent applied to disappearing ink. A thick, brick-red, crudely-drawn outline defines a seemingly weightless figure sporting a helmet. All four limbs extend outward, like an astronaut floating in space, and I dub the creature “UFO man.”

Now other shapes pop into focus. A running lizard with a long, bisected tail. A starfish-looking creature with legs sporting webbed feet. A devilish critter sprouting a horn from his forehead. Spider webs, wheels and sun patterns, one of which reminds me of Hello Kitty. My imagination strives to give meaning to squiggles for which it can invent no name.

Archaeologists think Native Americans began painting here some three to four thousand years ago, though the glyphs we ponder today range from two hundred to a thousand years old. Many are faded and blurred, the result of long exposure to the elements. Several bear scars gouged by vandalizing visitors, some bearing dates as long ago as 1885. The names and dates of visitation etched in the soft sandstone speak of human hubris, oblivious to the wisdom of the ancients.

I sink to my knees as my mind struggles to discern the meaning of the original artists. What did they mean to convey? What stories do these enduring emblems have to tell? Is it even possible for me to know? Is it cultural insensitivity for me to dare to venture here at all?

The deep etchings of the graffitists impede my efforts to gain some understanding, and I curse their disrespect. “Would you walk into an art museum and scribble over a van Gogh?” I growl at “ChasRosel” whose name obliterates part of the running lizard. “What arrogance does it take to vandalize a sacred site?” I demand of “Geo Lewis” who gashed his name on 5 November 1903. My fury grows, obliterating my zenful contemplation of the art.

Another inner voice urges me to ponder the enduring human impulse to leave a lasting mark. Is it arbitrary of me to value this sketch over that etching? To honor one work as spiritual and condemn another as crass? Who am I to know the hearts and minds of any whose marks I see here today?

Why do I rue the human vandals but not the erosive work of rain, sun and wind? These natural processes have damaged the original work more than any person. Would the original artists, more in tune with the processes of nature than I will ever be, even expect their creations to persist for eons? Would they be appalled that people outside the tribe would one day witness their work?

The effort to comprehend the boundaries of artistic impulse and arrogance, ignorance and epiphany, erosion and deposition makes for mental whiplash. All this deliberation has only served to diffuse the wonder I first felt in this sanctuary, before my rational mind broke the spell.

With a groan of frustration, I relinquish the inner debate and stand to relieve the pins and needles burning in my feet. As I do, I espy a single jackrabbit sitting in the dark recess under an off-limits overhang. It eyes me with wary caution, motionless except for its wriggling nose. I creep forward, just close enough for a photo. The jackrabbit maintains its steady stare. I look around for other hidden hares, and I’m surprised to find none, given their fecundity.

I snap my photo, and, as I look away, my eyes meet Joie’s. By unspoken agreement, we move toward the exit until the shrieking sun stops us in our tracks. We shade our eyes with our hands and pause until both pupils and souls, accustomed to shade and shadows, adjust. When we finally force our feet down the trail, the path seems both familiar and foreign. We walk in silence, no longer the giddy girls who scampered in just an hour ago. All too soon, we find ourselves in the car, headed for the not-so-free-way.

UFO man, running lizard and the other pictographs fire my imagination all through the drive home. My senses, still steeping in the murmurs of the cavern, barely notice the once-jarring logjam of too many cars jockeying for space on the crowded highway. Joie and I say little, except for the periodic “wow!” Our spontaneous getaway has refilled our tanks of wonder and mystery to overflowing.

After dropping Joie off, I rush home to the computer. My rational mind, despising all forms of ambiguity, demands rational explanations of the mysterious etchings we witnessed. Surely Google knows the meaning of the Carrizo Plain pictographs. Search after disappointing search, I find no clear explanations, only speculations about shamanism and hallucinogens. Perhaps the ancients mean for their mysteries to remain.

I pick up a marker and begin to doodle, without thinking. The scribbles reflect none of the grace of the pictographs, nor the complexity of my feelings about the day’s encounters. But the exercise satisfies some longing of my soul to express the ineffable. It also fills me with a sense of kinship with both the early artists and the later graffitists. I can never know what any of the drawings or gouges meant to any of them, except this: we share the human urge to create. To make some mark. To communicate, “I was Here.” I suspend my judgment of where and how we satisfy that urge.

For the moment, anyway. Tomorrow, I may once again rue the graffiti in my neighborhood, the products of contemporary humans daring to make their own marks; I have no will for it today. In this moment, I vow to allow the messages and marks of all the sages of the Carrizo Plain to speak to me before I resume the role of judge and jury.

My longing for understanding sated, the day’s journey now feels complete.

Until the next morning, that is, when the steely stare of the jackrabbit floods my meditation. The daring and determination of the prey staring down the predator hit me squarely in the solar plexus. The sheer will demonstrated by that jackrabbit puts to shame my own quickness to crumple under the weight of living in the world.

The world, modern and ancient, has always known tyrants and bullies. May I recall and replicate that steady gaze of the hare when I am staring down the perpetrators who threaten all that I hold dear. May I discern when to rest in the shadows, avoiding the heat of the day, and when to leap, with the swiftness of the jackrabbit, to heed my own calls to action. May I honor the stirrings of my own soul to make a meaningful mark, one that endures for as long as it will, then erodes back into soft earth.

***

 Author’s note:

As of this writing, newly-elected president President Biden is expected to cancel the sale of national parklands. These wild places still deserve our concern and conservation efforts as climate change, habitat destruction and pollution continue to threaten these natural treasures.