Comet Chasers: Moto-camping with NEOWISE

When you live in downtown Los Angeles but haven’t quite made it to celebrity status, you usually have one of two things: time or money.

Having enough of either to post a picture on social media of yourself enjoying just about anything in this subtropical climate twenty minutes from everything will award you the clichéd assumption that you are ‘living the dream’ whether you believe yourself to be or not.

Such is the case when a member of the Southern California motorcycle riding community shares a series of photos of his or her motorcycle gliding through scenic passes, up the PCH or along stretches of tree-lined twisties to a secluded campground backlit by the prismatic brushstrokes of the setting sun and the harsh shadows of a roaring fire pit which outline a hand holding a flask of whiskey to commemorate the miles.

Overwhelmed with odometer envy, every viewer’s comment bleeds with jealousy: “I wish I could get away.”

After typing it a few times, however, you stop feeling sorry for yourself and start planning your own adventure.

Thankfully, getting away during the most recent pandemic-related closures did not require much time or money. Armed with a route planning app, Google Maps’ gas station finder and the interactive Recreation.gov website for reservations, I began researching the best places my fiancé and I could ride to within a day’s travel from DTLA. This was in March.

By July, my heart weighed heavy with the goings-on of the world around us. I had lost my job, unemployment money hadn’t come through, peaceful protests had turned to riots, police car sirens wailed past our place almost daily and the stagnation from our isolation was palpably prosaic.

I was desperate for Mother Nature’s vibrant calm, her interdependent freedom and wide-open wonder. I needed to touch her clear waters, feel her breath on my face and embrace the earth under my body; to make fire, find peace, hold onto life, let go of time, see the stars, smell the trees, disconnect from it all and be at one with everything. I needed it with him.

On Tuesday, July 21, Dave and I packed up the bikes and headed east. After three years of wanting to go moto-camping together, we were finally geared up and ready for our inaugural rollout.

At the first gas stop, 80 highway miles from home, I took a picture of our motorcycles: mine, a performance-driven, pearl white 2016 Indian Scout Sixty piled high with my duffle bag, the ground tarp, our emergency med-kit, emergency roadside toolkit, both sleeping bags, both sleeping pads, both blankets, two chairs, all our food and water; his, a raked out, scarlet red, 2011 Harley-Davidson Rocker-C with his luggage… and the tent.

As we turned left onto CA-38, the raging seas of city life parted and my grip on the throttle relaxed. Buildings turned to orange trees and endlessly straight stretches of asphalt became intimately angled arms wrapping around mountainsides.

We gently leaned into every turn, slithering through the San Bernardino National Forest and downshifting our machines to the pace of the countryside, noticing only in hindsight that a loss of cell phone service had silenced our Bluetooth devices, reverently giving way to the music of the wind.

We backed our bikes into the # 23 spot of the Barton Flats Campgrounds around 4 pm and began setting up the tent as the sun passed just below the tops of the trees.

Wanting to make it to the mountain before sunset, we swiftly swapped our Kevlar-lined, armored jeans and hard-toe leather boots for stretchy joggers and rubber-soled sneakers and headed up the hiking trail holding hands.

I had been smiling for over an hour when we reached the top of the hill overlooking the treetop-covered valley and couldn’t imagine it getting any better.

That’s when Dave called me over to the base of the fallen tree where he had made his discovery: a geocache with five playing cards and a logbook from 2016, the very year we started dating.

As the sun rolled further west, pulling the covers of darkness over our heads, we returned to the campsite to cut the proverbial ribbon on our maiden voyage by popping open some beer bottles and roasting the requisite hot dogs and marshmallows.

With expanding but lamenting hearts, we stared up at the stars knowing that there are just as many in the sky over L.A. but that they can never, ever be seen. There we only have the kinds that cause traffic and win awards.

That’s when we remembered Neowise.

We headed for the hill once more with our headlamps and moonlight to guide the way. Every branch that snapped snatched my attention and stole my breath. My blood surged with exhilaration and trepidation.

We were strangers on this soil; members of a species responsible for its deforestation; and, the combined source of over 2,500ccs of mechanized noise pollution. Were we worthy of witnessing this celestial phenomenon?

I gasped as Dave grabbed my arm and told me to turn off my headlamp. Our eyes adjusted as the answer revealed itself across the night sky as the tiniest white streak.

We marveled in quiet reverence at the superficially unremarkable, seemingly stationary object, knowing in actuality that it was traveling over 144,000mph and won’t be seen again by Earthlings for another 6,800 years.

My right hand found his left and our fingers intertwined. I rested my head on his shoulder and we kissed under a canopy of time and space that never before was and never will be again.

If only for one night, we had escaped our urban ennui and retreated to hallowed grounds.

Beyond the city lights and under the illumination of the heavens, we had found treasures above and below, but most importantly, within each other.