Author: Photographer — Journalist

The Mohave Desert offers the equestrian many trails, each with a unique experience.  The trails merely portals or highways to different realms, and each challenges a rider’s experience, from partially washed-out roads to trails for the expert.  The highlight of trail riding in the Mohave is heading into high desert plateaus, exploring gold mines and haunted ruins, then riding over mountain ridges high above breath taking landscapes.  The timid or weak with a shy horse need not apply.

Camping can be challenging as well with Cougars, possums, Mohave Greens, and various stinging insects abundant.  Shrill sounds of spirits, those of another world, exist within the breeze, often cloaked by the smell of sage.  An odd interplay between the cosmos and the high desert flats, relay snippets, the sounds of whispering, conversations of others, or a horses nicker on the desert flats perhaps one-hundred miles away.

From Civilization to the Outback

From California’s Interstate 5 it’s an easy jog to Highway 138 east, to Highway 14 north past the Jawbone Camp site.  A few miles from Jawbone is your right turn to Redrock Randsburg Road, then stick to the left, Garlock Road, at the “Y” and you will begin to realize the vastness of this land called the Mohave Desert.  You have entered into the El Paso Mountains and BLM land, a small portion of the Mohave and yet filled with trails, old roads, active and played-out gold mines, and ghost towns.  You will run across a prospector or two and a few pet cemeteries still in use, and century old homesteader burial plots.

Driving Directions in the Mohave

Because of the remoteness, driving directions approximate at best.  This situation is taken as a sign to flatlanders or city dwellers to stay away.  To a true and awe inspired equestrian, and other adventurers, the expectation of something different, something unique about to happen, but what?

Past the Devil’s Backbone, then turning onto Garlock Road and about 4 miles from the “Y” you will see a stand of Scrub Oak trees, with a rolling dirt road to the trees front, which is on the left hand side as you head east.  The challenges and mystical environment of the area begins here.

You will need a good four-wheel drive truck and a sound trailer to head up and into the mountains at this point.  Going past a pet cemetery dotted with small American Flags and a couple of unique trash piles (rummaging through the pile is a step into history), then over a large hump in the road and you come to a landing and what is used as a horse camp.  This is about five miles into another land, and you discover quickly you are simply a visitor, and attention must be paid.  Many prospectors use it as well.  Gold is also abundant here.

From here it is flat and an easy unload/load for your horses.  Also you will see a catacomb of roads to take for your day or weekend ride.  All roads lead to many other roads, gong over the mountain or through a small pass near the flats.  It is mountainous and high desert so water, first aid kit, snake bite kit and a little food and a warm jacket is needed.  Mohave Greens live here so be careful and watch out for them, very poisonous.

Gold Mining

Some riders take along a metal detector as gold is found a few times a week and depending on the amount of prospectors in the area at any given time.  You will pass by many Claim Sites already filed with the assay office at the BLM.  These are off limits to the public.

Most Claims are owned by Gold Mining Clubs that restrict a particular number of memberships to certain areas.  They are careful about how many members prospect their Claimed Sites, so you may run across one of these members who will ask you if you’re prospecting or not, and whether or not you are a member of their organization.  The roads and trails are public access and BLM land open to the public, only the mining may be restricted in certain areas.

Ghost Towns and the Tales

Ghost towns in the area can be found by the rider, but look close as you can miss the sites.  Nestled within one canyon, easily overlooked, sits what remains of an old general store, the remains of a blacksmith shop next door, and the ruins of a small saloon.

Rumor has it that the concubine of the saloon owner kept the saloon in operation.  The owner went off to World War I, his concubine waiting at the front window of the small shed, next to the saloon, for his return.  She eventually committed suicide.  The letter giving her notice of her lover’s death in the war still gripped tight in her hand; all the while she swung from a rafter above the tipped chair and inside the same shed where she waited.

It’s claimed his spirit and hers eventually found one another, with both traversing through the ruins and the canyons nightly, their shrill cry’s of longing for one another sad, remorseful.  The saloon built of wood in the late 1800’s, so not much other than floor beams, corner posts and two or three lingering, vocal, ghosts remain.  Could they be the lover’s and why some assume they indeed come together?  Or are they lonely spirits lost in the transition or our cosmos, stranded indefinitely?

Horse Camp

At night and back at the horse camp and around the campfire the night breeze through the passes, make the sounds of souls searching for their mates.  Perhaps the ghost tales true from the old general store and saloon, as the wind-sounds are eerie, begging for acceptance, always searching.  More small enclaves exist throughout the area so it is up to each rider to locate them and wonder about the history, the tales, and the legends.

Yes, the spirits that remain and sing their songs of loneliness carried by the constant desert breeze is a true desert song.  Horse and rider take a front seat here, to every occasion.  Through the passes and to the ears that listen brings perhaps a tear to the eye, with that uncommon knowledge that you and your horse shared an occult occurrence, or something mystical in nature.  Yet, within your own heart, you discover the hope or dreams of each small sound prevalent, ironically cheerful as resolution in the air of the healed broken hearts that exist, despite the tragedy, and that somehow acknowledged by horse and rider – the bond — into an odd acceptable resolution.  Or not!

http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/ridgecrest/exploringelpasomtnarea.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paso_Mountains

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Paso_Mountains_Wilderness

Our current outlook, often false perceptions, of predators such as the Wolf, follows a long history of not only being misunderstood, but hunted to almost extinction many times throughout history.  As usual prejudice, hatred, and ignorance is the enemy of the wolf.  As those who slaughtered the Buffalo, many hunters and trappers killing not for food or safety, rather for the photographic-moment.

Science Ignored

And yet scientific studies, the past and throughout our data collecting activities in history, show beyond a doubt the Wolf remains a positive element within their environment.  Adolph Murie, a most noted and well respected biologist, observed Wolves for years.

Dr. Murie developed solid and trustworthy conclusions throughout those same years of observation. “It appears that wolves prey mainly on the weak class of sheep,” (i.e. The Wolves of Mt. McKinley) “that is the old, the diseased, and the young in their first year.  Such predation would seem to benefit the species over a long period of time and indicates a normal prey-predator adjustment. . .”

This also stated overwhelming as fact within any wild environment the Wolf is placed, despite what breed they may be, and whatever wildlife may exist there.  This is well researched data, heavily documented by many biologists throughout history, and all agree.

What many legitimate biologists (i.e. with no political agenda) disagree to is what is being stated today as truth, from both ranchers/farmers and our government regulators, is the fact of Wolves killing for the fun of it, or to kill unnecessarily.  This is simply bogus information and not found within quantifiable data of any research, or from anyone who follows Wolves in the wild.

Wolf Packs

Dr. Murie had also noted the close relationships among each pack, and the “. . . remarkable friendship” among the members of the pack.  This was born out time and time again throughout many more studies and throughout data from other biologists.

Wolves and Authorities

Also throughout the years it becomes quite obvious authorities never learn their lesson from history.  Data overwhelmingly demonstrates that hunters and trappers, for Wolves in this case, are only able to use livestock losses as a rationale to kill them.  And as history shows often, this rationale is flawed, and as in the past it is currently and greatly over exaggerated by livestock owners.

Reading the material, that is actual livestock killed by wolves, can be easily deciphered as untrue when compared to reality and even the slightest of investigation regarding the information.  So within an ignorant context the wolves are once again killed for what appears to be bragging or photographic rights, rather than any ethical or required kill.

Doctor Keith Oberman, a Psychiatrist, states, “Oddly, the sociopath no longer accepts the plight of war for the leap into manhood, and within our warring society which has become common place.  Currently it is either to become a gang-member or to become a hunter of wildlife, with their kills becoming their trophies.  The photographic proof becomes the measure of their leap into becoming a man, so they think.  This is so they can prove to one another their manhood, despite the fact they accomplished their kill within a totally safe environment, and only dangerous to the wildlife.  A very sad circumstance prevails for the wildlife.”

Many die-hard trappers also remain totally uninformed about the Wolf’s ecology.  Many state Fish and Game Departments also remain aloof to the Wolf and its positive attributes toward local ecology, mostly due to politics.

These same regulators of our wildlife assume hunting license sales and availability of the wildlife the priority, rather than any factual data showing the established kill-rate of wolves to be truthful or correct.  Yet these same administrators knowingly lie to legislators to obtain funding for their programs, again obvious and contrary to fact with only a slight investigation into the material or data.

Legislator’s simply turn the other way in their ever present need for votes, and to blatantly ignore the useless killing and sacrifice of the Wolf.  A psychological disconnection, so to speak, is promoted by a physical disconnection, a blatant cause with no cure.

The End of a True Species

Unfortunately, a simple fact blossoms into an enormous and disgusting reality.  The different specie Wolves being killed today are the remnants of pure-breed stock.  The Red Wolf, for example, known to come from early Pleistocene is, like so many other breeds that have become and are on the way of becoming, hybridized.

Their species become so diluted in the 1970s that a pure breed of Red Wolf diminished entirely within the wild.  And on it goes with the only existing pure-breeds of wolves left in the world, in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Utah, and northern California.  Yet this so significant of fact is ignored, set aside for, well, ignorance.  True enough, sub-species exist, but in no way similar to their original blood-line.

So we find ignorance within our society to be consequential toward eliminating yet another class of wild animal specie, the Wolf.  Ironically, this elimination is cataloged with further ignorance from the hunters themselves, a displaced pride in actually killing and eliminating an entire species.  We also find, and see quite often, government regulators taking part in the elimination of the Wolf.  Their responsibility to protect them obviously set aside – all for the kill and the temporary ignorant lust that seems to follow the kill.

Wolves are beneficial to our wild environment – research data is robust and available for all to review this as fact.  Essentially, where wolves do exist a healthy wild life environment also exists.  So why are we killing wolves?  For nothing more than to have photos taken with the dead wolves!  A sorry and sad reason for something so significant!  —  John Cox, M.A. C/M