It speaks to the soullessness of LA that, as close as it is, Joshua Tree National Park isn't overrun by weekenders.
My office-mate Phil and I drove down here as a prelude to SIGGRAPH, spend a week in the high desert taking photographs and breathing in the wide blue skys before we head to LA with its traffic and its pressure and its brown haze.
There are overlooks here where we can see the brown haze leaking from the LA basin into some neighboring valleys, but here in the park the weather has been mild, and the skys gorgeous and clear.
The bloom has apparently stayed late in the desert this year, so as we climbed the trail over Pleasant Valley by some old half-blocked mine entrances, the valley spread out below us, tens of miles long, with patches of yellow. The trail had the yellow flowers interspersed with flecks of violet, and the occasional red cactus flower along with the green of the hardier foliage.
Phil and I got misdirected on a hike on Saturday, and as we bushwhacked through scratching brush and avoided the pricklies, his patience wore thin and he decided to meet me back at the car. I continued on into the mountain with too little water, found the trail, and was climbing up this gully and wondering when I ought to turn back, I stumbled on to this wonderful small oasis, with trees and other greenery in the small crack of the gulley before the top of the saddle.
Alas, when I stopped to admire it I realized that I was lightheaded, had a dry mouth, and showing all the signs of someone who should get back to "civilization", or at least of the exposed desert, quickly, so I beat a hasty retreat.
I'm writing this on a laptop under a cactus, amidst the strange rock formations as I watch the sky turn subtle pastel shades around me. And I'll sit here as the colors fade and the earth shadow rises, the stars will appear one by one until the milky way becomes distinguishable, in all its glory, spread from horizon to horizon.
Well, with a litte sky glow around the edges, we're not that far from LA, after all.
I love the wilderness, and the solitude, but I've always kept myself from it because I've been afraid I could get too much, and I don't ever want to lose this sense of awe and wonder.
Sometimes I wonder if that's wise, or if I should just saturate myself in it and see if I really can be satiated.
My first experience with this area was when Catherine and I were moving to California. We were driving along route 40, had just crossed the Nevada-California border, when the air conditioning gave out.
We looked at the map, saw that the next town was only 60 miles ahead, and decided to push on. We didn't notice some moderately high passes in between, and were ignorant of the blistering heat.
It's the only time I've had to drive using the engine temperature gauge as my limit. We stopped at the occasional roadside pull-offs and bought 48 oz drinks with as much ice and as little drink as we could pack into them, and slammed those puppies like shooters.
Several hours later we arrived in Barstow.
This time I was much more prepared to see the desert beauty.
Joshua Tree National Park is in the high desert in southern California. Peak season for the park is October through May, we're here in August, which are supposedly the dog days, but oddly they're not. Temperature has been very tolerable, although we still have to drink quite a bit because the air is dry, and the altitude and cloudless sky make the sun something to worry about, but we've had a very pleasant visit.
Joshua Trees themselves are a cross between a cactus and a palm tree. Unlike, say, the bristlecone pine forest, they're amazingly dense in many valleys here. But the park also has plenty of other space and geology that make it well worth a visit.
We stayed the first night at Indian Rock campgrounds. Reminiscent of Garden of the Gods, this has lots of neat formations rising from the ground, good scrambling and some decent climbing sorts of formations.
Alas, it's also near town and separated from the rest of the park, so the jarheads from the nearby Marine air to ground weapons training facility come here at night to party. As they did, late.
But I woke up at 4 to lie on my back and watch the meteors fall under this incredible sky, and heard the aforementioned owls, then songbirds, and was not disappointed.
Saturday we spent in the park, we went down the Geology Tour Road, hiked around the remains of one of the mines that used to operate here, and in amongst the wildflowers that are still here compliments of this bizarre late weather we're having.
We camped that night in Jumbo Rocks campground, which we've been told is quieter (there isn't much ranger supervision in this park in the summer, the off season). The rocks are still spectacular.
Joshua Tree doesn't have the huge dramatic impact of many other spaces. Castle Crags, or Yosemite, or the Grand Canyon, or a number of other places are instantly impressive. This region looks like desert, sand punctuated by scrub brush, a dustbowl gone bad. But when venture into the terrain I discover beautiful things, wildflowers clinging tenaciously to life, the colors in the cactii, the sandblasted rocks. This is not a space of sweeping grandeur, this is a land of subtleties.
I'll add pictures to this, and try to collate some better visitor type information, but this is my first trip to the park and I'm still exploring.
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Monday, August 9th, 1999 danlyke@flutterby.com