…..flew home monday morning from a 5 day trip to Joshua Tree National Park for a photo shoot and a co-write….. The view from every room of the home, sans the leiu, was spectacular! propped up ¾'s of the way up a large hillside, a baby relative to the giants just miles away yet it “did the trick”,ya know, "checked the boxes" in everyway. Bummer no fires were allowed in the area but you could see and sense why. This climate, known as Hi-Desert, is dry, yet the dirt roads that comprise literally every residential street are eroded by what appears to be the dirt artifacts of occasionally visiting rapids of some sustained proportion. Trust me you don't want a full bladder and a creeky suspension keeping you company as you jerk and jive up n down and all round these parts.
I went into this trip knowing only one main thing about this place. That my favorite album of all time, The Joshua Tree, U2, was heavily influenced by the spirit of this area.
Driving down from LA the landscape moved past us as if like being on some animated spinning wheel as the mountains and wind farms fell away to reveal an ever-lasting gobb-stopper of terrains and atmospheres like we were trippn' at Burning Man!
Temp played around 44-60 much of the time. The wind at night, especially at night, howled like a dementor scratching and wailing just on the other side of doubled paned glass. Like those vid's on TikTok showing little jimmy eating his animal crackers never once considering the tigers about to pounce on him ! whew wait I'm just writing this and getting anxious. Glass is helpful!
Apparently the rock formations here happened by underlying core earth magma exploding up and thru crusts of rock thus fracturing and melting its edges as it surfaced like Sean Connery Submarine in The Hunt for Red October.
I will post a few pics.
JJJ