The quintessential American desert - the most visible, the most vulnerable, the most emblematic, and the most misunderstood - is the Mojave. Stretching from the outskirts of Los Angeles to the psychic fringes of Las Vegas, it contains such archetypal American spots as Death Valley, Edwards Air Force Base, Joshua Tree National Park, and the Panamint Mountains (where the forty-niners found silver and the Manson family prepared for Helter Skelter).

From the twisted silhouette of the Joshua tree to the pencil-straight blacktop of Route 66, the Mojave is a place of contradictions: a region of apparent openness that retains a palpable air of mystery; an empty, inhospitable land that has been thoroughly scoured by people; a stark and oppressive environment that dispenses a feeling of liberation.

It encompasses not only intriguing natural history but stubborn human aspiration - a blue-skied, blue-jeaned kingdom of high-speed jet fighters and UFO watchers, dirt-bike racers and endangered tortoises, secret drug labs and health food preachers, nuclear waste dumps and nudist squatters, plucky ranchers and corporate gold miners.