this post is about my most recent adventure to joshua tree national park this past week.
having left my house at 10:30 am to pick up my buddy randy, we only made it into the park and to our campsite by perhaps 6 pm, by a rough and generous estimate. what happened in between is not really pertinent to the immediate story at hand. however, i will garner this tale with some highlights, since this is my blog and i do have that liberty.
highlight one: peco bill's oklahoma bbq (somewhere in burbank) - my first experience with okie bbq. wow.
highlight two: rei. always fun to waste money on cool camping gear.
highlight three: the exhausting search for firewood that nearly broke the collected calm of the moseying nature of the day.
and so, we're there. the drive to jumbo rocks, the site of our first night of camping, was about 22 miles and you see a good overview of the north side of the park. giant, what amounts to, piles of rocks form mountains. it's very hard to describe the architecture of all the land, as the park has different formations and dimensions, yet it's all pretty amazing to figure that the valley and high desert was all carved out by an ancient body of water. so piles of rocks give way to singular rock formations, little nubs that are the dream of rock climbers (of which we saw quite a few). all around are gorgeous joshua trees. majestic. and the different positions, so numerous, but at the same time of certain types. shadows cast by clouds and by mountains. it's an insanely joyous scenery.
got to jumbo rocks, pitch a tent, start a fire, cook dinner, drink some bourbon to stay warm in the 40 or so degree night, put out the fire and go to bed.
the sound of coyotes at night should be terrifying, but really, its like a really mournful plainchant, a plaintive bluesy moan. gorgeous and comforting.
woke up. explored the desert just over the rocks that secluded us from the vast wilderness beyond. packed up.
rode into town to find cellular service to link up with friends annie and sarah from my barnard days. in the meantime, explored some of the local shops and culture. attempted to grub several times and ended up buying sandwiches to bring back to the park. made our way to a new campsite, the smallest of the developed ones on the grounds, white tank. found the best spot - site 4. pushed back into the rocks and secluded from all other possible fellow campers. kinda spooky, definitely beautiful. pitched a tent to claim it as our own and set off for a leisurely hike.
a ranger had told us about an old mine/miner's cabin up a relatively unmarked ridge. what i mean by this was that they were attempting, or more like thinking about attempting, to turn this path into an official trail. all we had to guide us were stacked rocks plotting a course up the mountain. on the way up, i saw a snake. the journey up was quite fun - just a solid uphill hike with beautiful views. i noted on the way up that everything is the desert is spiky or rough. it does not want you to kill it, much less touch it. even the flowers seem to have cactuses underneath.
so we're wandering around looking for this rumored mine, about to give up when, ah ha! a pile of granite and an aborted mine.
we get really excited and wander down a hill and low and behold, the eagle cliff mine. its on a strange little plateau in the midst of hilly, rocky terrain. it's almost an alien world there. you have to understand that at this point, randy and i were absolutely boiling over with excitement. the whole boyish adventure mechanism had taken over after years of disuse. it was like one of those little plastic play castles, except this was real. the mine was deep and scary and not closed off. luckily we both have good sense and no urge to die so young and stayed on the perimeter throwing stones inside to gauge how deep it went. then i wander off and discover an old barrel metal hoop around a cactus. i get excited and we discover a path that leads to the back of this miner's cabin built into the rocks. it's a pretty staggering place, really humbling, exceptionally stimulating. we explored around there for quite some time. the home still had cans and other rusted metal objects strewn about and apparently lost hikers will spend the night there, which seems sorta spooky. turns out that eagle cliff is one of the earliest claims in the park, dating back to 1895, so its very possible the cabin dates to some time around then. truly amazing. i was speechless in the history of this place. more rock climbing ensued before we had to head back down to meet up with the girls who were supposed to arrive any minute.
on the way down, we did end up getting lost. having lost the minimal markers, we staggered through back country, watching out for spanish bayonets and other hurtful plants. truth be told, we did end up getting cut up a bit. but it could always be worse and was totally worth it. on the trek down we saw both a bighorn sheep and a tarantula -- totally far out.
got back down finally thanks to our orientation skills and a compass that i made randy bring.
back to the camp site where the girls had arrived and were settling in. met mike, our next door camping buddy, from san diego, star watcher, latent conspiracy theorist and genuinely nice guy. its amazing how when people are really forthright and friendly, one is very taken aback and feels as if there is something wrong, to be worried about. perhaps there was, but his manner was fresh and appreciated. conversation free of machines is a rarity and mike was a master at it.
at the campsite, we cooked, drank, played guitar around the campfire and made merry eventually making our way towards pleasant slumbers.
the next morning, we woke up, packed up and headed towards cap rock, the site where gram parsons's body was burned. if you're unfamiliar with the story, the gist is that gram and his road manager had a spoken bond where whoever died first, the other would take their body to joshua tree to burn and rest. so when gram overdosed just outside joshua tree at the joshua tree inn, his parents in florida wanted the body returned there for burial. at the airport, the road manager got onto the tarmac and stole the body and took it out to joshua tree and burned it in a spot just under cap rock. this is where we were. people graffiti messages on the spot, but we opted to just perform a ritual ceremony whose particulars i cannot divulge. i will say it involved singing sin city and listening to lots of international submarine band, byrds, flying burrito bros. and solo material. i also cannot say whether we saw his spirit, but it was a moving experience.
then into town to the local country kitchen for amazing chocolate chip pancakes. as learned from the adventure in the northwest, a country kitchen is always a good call.
from there, home.
in recap. what an amazing place, spiritual and raw. a total respite. and the internal diversity of the park is staggering. once you get attuned to such things, which i am slowly becoming conscious of, america becomes an even more wondrous and its beauty more deep.
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