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Bodie Hills: A Great Place to Visit
We
bounced into Bodie the way most of the
lumber and firewood once did, up from the
shores of Mono Lake on the old Cottonwood
Canyon wagon road. It was mid-July, but up here where
the Sierra Nevada meets the Great Basin, summer had only
just taken hold. Beckett, 3, slept in his car seat in the back,
slumped over a pillow against the door. Jasper, 6, looked out
at the hills. The dog, his head out the front window, gulped
air spiked with sweet phlox, bitterbrush, and sage, and
surveyed the landscape for jackrabbits.
The infamous Wild West town site—since 1962 preserved
in a state of “arrested decay”—was at its fitfor-the-big-screen
best, with cumulous clouds over
the western ridges and great sidelong shafts of lateafternoon
sun on antique timbers and spring-green
hills. Even at five minutes to closing, the parking lot
overflowed with dusty RV’s and rental cars. But less
than a mile down-canyon, along the trickle of Bodie
Creek, what was once the main (and notoriously
bandit-infested) stage road to Aurora turned rutted
and wild—and empty.
At the edge of a meadow thick with wild daisies,
before the Nevada state line, we turned onto
a lonely, two-track Jeep trail. I locked the hubs and
shifted into 4-wheel-drive. [For guidance on a destination
that does not require 4WD, see the information
box on page 57.]
Up we climbed into the heart of the Bodie
Wilderness Study Area (WSA), one of three such
designated areas surrounding the state historic park
that together make up nearly half of the Bureau
of Land Management’s 200,000-acre Bodie Hills
54 1-800-THE-WILD