Joshua Tree

I woke too early today after too little shite sleep. It was windy last night, and I imagined the airplane windmilling around at the airport, smacking into expensiver airplanes. There were no tiedowns, so I could only chock the wheels. (They're used to airplanes that are so big that they don't tie down. Lears. G-IVs. Big iron.) It, of course, did not move in the night; but such is the useless chemical maundering of a better-than-average human brain through the course of a night.

The silver lining to this crap night of sleep is that I had nothing - no...single...thing - I had to do today. Joshua Tree emerged as the natural course of action.

Joshua Tree is a special place to me. (I'd write "special, special place" but it sounds twee. But it really is.) For a pretty non-mystical-experience kind-of-guy, I've had full-on, headspinning things happen in and around J.Tree. Absolutely unexplainable. And it unfortunately taints any trip I take there, because I wait for the shoes to start dropping.

Today was too cold and too breezy for great mysticism. I wore shorts, but by the Ocotillo patch down at the south end, I had taken them off and put pants on. I only wished I'd brought a coat. I would have stayed longer. But not a lot. It was just cold. And up at Key it was windy. No wonder it was bumpy flying in over there yesterday.

Regardless, it was a fine day. Not many humans, which is always a good day for me, but unfortunately cold enough to keep most creatures in under the ground. I did see a crow that was about the size of a Prius, and a rabbit who did not want to be seen by me.













Ocotillo. Just Ocotillo. How old is this damn thing?







I put a few red dots over the rabbit's head. Go jack, go...










Oyster Bar. Big Bloody Rock.






And then... coming out the north edge of the park, one is confronted with the shocking dearth of value embodied in the 'town' of Joshua Tree. Why this has not been embraced by a year-round habitude of climbing people and hip hoteliers, granola munching mystics and mountain bike renting young capitalists... I just don't know. But it hasn't. It's a shit hole of desert rats in single-wide mobile homes and rundown liquor stores and junk. Anyone want to buy a town? It's a destination waiting for a caretaker.