NIGHT CRAWLERS

HOW DO YOU MAKE HIGH-DESERT OFF-ROADING, EVEN MORE TREACHEROUS? DO IT AFTER DARK.

- LAWRENCE ULRICH

BRONCO

GUNNING A FORD BRONCO through Fish Creek Wash in California's Sonoran Desert is going full Baja mode in every sense, a fat contrail of dust jetting from 35-inch tires. Nothing unusual about that. Except it's spilled-ink black outside, demanding a keen lookout for the truck-killer boulders as they suddenly loom into view.

I wasn't sure about any of this. Venturing offroad after dark tends to be the sport of teens, fueled by dares, peers, and beers. Things usually go towtruck-and-911 wrong. Already we've performed a (daytime) desert rescue that would impress the French Foreign Legion. A darker near-disaster is just up ahead.

Our wingman, Marco Hernandez, a 4x4 builder, author of The Overland Cook, and enthusiastic explorer of nighttime trails, was right. Every driver, outdoors fan, or big-city wanderer knows that night changes everything: a heightened, altered state is wound into our caveman DNA, triggered by perhaps-fatal danger from all the things we cannot see. There's a reason most horror movies save the juicy stuff for after sundown. Yet night, especially for a lifelong owl like myself, is also a beautiful thing.

Seeing those canyon walls go bright when you turn on the lights-I think it's exciting,” Hernandez says.