Skywalker--Highs and Lows on the Pacific Crest Trail by Bill Walker Page A

you’ll never believe what they did.”
    “What?” I wondered.
    “They never invited me in there to participate.”
    The gentleman with whom I was interlocuting was the owner, Richard Tatum. He was in his mid-sixties and a spitting image of the comedian, Don Rickles. But Rickles had always seemed to have a rational side to him. The fellow in front of me appeared stark mad.
    “The one thing I can’t stand though,” Richard said, “is when people don’t give me the respect I deserve. Nobody disses Big Dick.”
    “You hear what I’m saying?” he asked. “Do you understand?”
    “Yeah,” I said mildly, wondering where this was going.
    “I’m Big Dick,” Richard shouted. “Do you believe me?”
    “Yes,” I answered.
    “Let me show you,” he said, unzipping his pants.
    “That’s okay,” I quickly said.
    “Take a look at Big Dick.”
    “No,” I pleaded.
    I jerked my head away just a split-second before Big Dick could directly display his badge of manhood to me. Close call.
    Quickly, I decided a better place to seek refuge from the stiff wind was outside of the garage behind a car. Left Field soon walked up with that expectant look hikers adopt after being out in the desert for a few days.
    “Hey Skywalker,” he said, “what are you doing sitting here?”
    “Just getting everything straight in my backpack for tomorrow.”
    “Is the owner in there?”
    Left Field and I had maintained a running verbal battle for a good while now, which we both enjoyed. He was only 21 years old, but his every move bespoke, “I’m in command of things.”
    I decided this was a good time to test his mettle.
    “Sure, go check in with him,” I responded, but gave him no heads-up of what to expect.
    Ten minutes later he walked out and looked at me with a mixture of amusement and shock.
    “Is it just me,” he asked, “or is this guy batshit crazy?”
    We laughed in unison as he kept looking at me for a specific response.
    “Did he, uh?” I began to ask.
    “Yeah,” he nodded with his face flushed.
    Left Field had finally met his match in Big Dick.
    Fortunately, we were to see that there was a lot more to Big Dick than his initial raffish behavior. Without this lonely, windswept outpost to provide some relief, traversing the Mojave would be quite a bit more complicated for a PCT hiker. Given the overall harshness, it’s not surprising that quite the mercurial character is the Mojave’s gatekeeper.

     
    “The Mojave Desert offers a blend of splendor, stark beauty, and vast expanses not found anywhere else in the country,” wrote the Defenders of Wildlife. All I can say is it takes an especially romantic person or organization to have such a love-love relationship with the Mojave Desert.
    Nonetheless, millions of Americans have chosen to live here. Las Vegas, with a population of nearly two million, is the largest city in the Mojave; almost a million people in the eastern Los Angeles metropolitan area live within the boundaries of the Mojave as well. Millions more flock annually to see the Badwater Basin in Death Valley National Park, the lowest point in the entire United States (-282 feet).
    Temperatures in the same place can easily vary 80 degrees in one day. Readings below zero degrees are common in the winter, but in the summer temperatures can easily exceed 130 degrees. Annual rainfall is usually less than five inches. The environment is simply inhospitable to human life, except in those oases created by modern irrigation techniques. Heck, it’s even harsh to animals judging by how few you see out there. And the ones you see are almost all poisonous.

     
    I was very reluctant to go out in the Mojave alone for fear of getting lost. Left Field had fled immediately after yesterday’s incident, and everybody was scattered.
    Fortunately, a foursome had hiked into Desert Bazaar at dark the previous evening. I had seen them before at the Saufleys and the Andersons, and they appeared to be that rare thing—a close