For Thursday, Feb. 10, 2000 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 732 words

Beaten paths

I've been thinking a lot about four-wheeling lately. I have never gone 4X4 driving in California. It is an untapped treasure.

I've hiked 500 miles. I've packed gear over coastal and mountain trails in all four cardinal directions, crossing my share of bumpy back roads, but always on foot.

Now I own a 4X4 and can begin to explore. I've never owned a 4X4 before. It opens a new door.

In rural Pennsylvania, growing up in the Allegheny wilderness, we four-wheeled for fun and function.

No, come to think of it, I cannot remember a time when I ever went into the woods for function. I never had a job or chore involving tramping through a forest. The forest is associated in my mind purely with recreation and play.

My friends had Jeeps and Scouts, often with cable winches attached to the front ends. We would drive to remote fishing spots, or follow the network of hundreds of miles of power-line and gas-line roads that rolled over the hills like cracks in safety glass. We drove through rivers, over boulders, winched ourselves up steep banks.

I owned a Kawasaki 175cc dirt bike. It was my primary mode of transportation as a teenager. I drove it 16-7 where roads never existed, straight through the woods, straight up and straight down.

When I moved to California 22 years ago, I bought a Honda 400, a street bike. With it I explored back roads but no off roads. My whole adult-vehicle-owner life can be summed up like this: always wanted a four-wheel drive; always needed a two-wheel drive.

I have been forever curious of the California off-road scene. I have collected topographic maps covering the entire state and have traveled many rocky roads with my finger. I have a fat folder of forestry pamphlets featuring four-wheel fun facts: regulations, locations, summations, explanations, and invitations.

Finally, I have the last necessary ingredient to reify my fantasy: the truck itself.

Once, on-line, I posted on a Jeep-owners bulletin board a request to join a group doing the Rubicon Run -- California's annual premier off-road festivity. I got a reply and an invitation. For one and another reason, the tender was never tilled. I was busy working or something.

Many times while driving Brownie, my old van, along wilderness roads I would stop when I passed intersections marking the mouths of Jeep roads. I would look longing at them. Sometimes, I would pull out my topos and study where the roads went, perhaps have a vicarious finger fling. Sometimes, I would park and walk a ways, examining the severity of the ruts and ridges, imagining myself bounding over them.

Sometimes, I have pushed my car or van to perform like a Jeep. I have driven to Uncle Tom's Cabin. I have driven to the banks of the Middle Fork Yuba. I have driven to the entrance and exit of the Rubicon. Always, I have been able to drive into the wild, but only as far as the first big ditch.

In Crystal Basin, an area that swarms with monster trucks and modified Jeeps, I parked amongst them.

Once, while camping at the Yuba with members of the Backpacking Club, four local boys pulled in with two Toyota 4X4 trucks. It was evening and they had just returned from a full day of off-road rampaging. The trucks were solid mud, mud even up to the roll bars and flood lights. The only clean spots were on the windshields, where the wipers had been working overtime.

The boys sat with us and told stories of their extremes -- bogs, jumps, climbs, drops, tilts. They always traveled in pairs, always read to pull each other out of a jam, or give the other guy a ride into town to pick up tools and replacement parts. Once they camped out while fixing a broken axle. They spoke casually in esoteric phrases that showed they spent a lot of time playing hard together.

I don't intend to go that far. Driving hell-bent across the Badlands no longer appeals to me. I'm looking for a few short, happy loops, some afternoon joy rides.

To end on the same note as last week: I'm looking to amalgamate two heretofore separate concepts into a synthesized, syncretized, pleasurable new variant -- wilderness camping and heavy equipment. "Honey, toss me another pillow and that bag of oranges, will you?"