A rocky, alien, carefree, bear-free national park
One motivation for my mini-vacation to Joshua Tree last week was to see the town. The other was, naturally, to see the national park.
If your idea of a national park is a forest of sequoias, a waterfall and a bear, Joshua Tree is not for you. It’s 1,200 square miles of sand, rocks and one of the most unusual-looking trees you’ve ever seen: gnarled, weathered, nearly bare except for clumps of green needles at the end of each twisted branch.
It’s like a national park devoted to endless versions of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree. Of course, we all love Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree, so that’s almost a selling point.
The park has exploded in popularity, with visitor numbers doubling since 2014 to just under 3 million in 2019.
Though I’d been to historic sites overseen by the National Park Service, the Grand Canyon might be the only national park I’d seen. That’s never been my interest. But
Joshua Tree seemed worth trying.
I doubt I’ll ever become a serious hiker, in the sense of hopping around on boulders or lugging survival gear. But I like to walk, and as the saying goes, hiking is basically walking outdoors.
After paying $30 for a multiday pass at a visitor center, I drove on Park Boulevard into the park along the twolane asphalt, smoother than most city streets. At the entrance, they checked my pass and waved me through with a smile.
So there I was, inside Joshua Tree National Park. The road wound into the park with gentle curves. I’m sure I had a look of dazed wonder as my gaze swept the alien landscape.
At one pullout, I pulled over. A plain of Joshua trees stretched before me, low hills in the near distance.
I toted a book to take a photo of it with a Joshua tree to illustrate an upcoming column — all these columns are connected somehow — and after returning the book to my car, I locked up and went back, this time toting my water tumbler.
In a forest, the trees might not be any closer together than these Joshua trees, but they are so small and barren that seeing them, say, 30 feet apart puts each one in isolation. A plain dotted with hundreds of them, though, is a sight.
I had seen Joshua trees, but not up close and never this many. They’ve become as symbolic for the desert as the saguaro cactus with its barrel trunk and upraised arms.
(U2, needless to say, made Joshua trees famous on an album cover — with a photo shot near Death Valley.)
I walked among and past the trees. Here and there was one at knee level, which I thought of fondly as baby Joshuas. Scattered visitors paused for selfies with the trees. Half a dozen young people had clambered up a pile of boulders with food. I kept walking past more trees and toward the hills.
Could I climb up to the lowest ridgeline? I threaded my way up the hill’s slow rise, glad I’d had sense enough to wear long pants and thick hiking socks. Otherwise, the cholla plants would have scratched me up.
As someone who has a running internal monologue, often about emails I need to return or other mundanities, I realized my inner white noise had vanished. All I could think about was where to put my foot for this step, and the next, and the next. It was calming.
The closer I got to the lowest ridge, the farther away it seemed. Are distances deceptive, or was the ridge not as sharply defined as it had looked from the ground?
Finally, with no point to prove, I gave up and started back down. The road and my car were in sight the whole time, a mile or so away. The nearest person was about as far.
Was it a good idea to have gone off alone? I don’t know, but the solo trek had been liberating. And I was careful coming down, realizing a sprained ankle might put me in a pickle.
Back at my car, I drove to the nearby Quail
Springs picnic area and ate lunch before pushing on by car, deciding my two-hour hike was good enough for one day.
The next day I returned — waved through again with a smile — with the plan of doing at least two formal hikes, starting with the Hidden Valley trail.
This turned out to be a loop of about a mile, along marked trails easily followed, and with other hikers always in sight. Text on pedestals explained history or related facts about the plant directly behind it. The contrast was startling. I had no idea the park’s official trails were like this.
On my way out, I asked a park ranger about my hike the day before, wondering as a newbie if I’d broken protocol in some way. Was it allowed, I asked, to just go for a walk?
Yes, he said. Where I’d been wasn’t remote and the marked trails can get crowded.
“We recommend that when it’s really busy,” he said, “just pull off and have your own experience.”
Thus reassured, I went on a half-mile walk toward a hill and back — another experience that belonged to me alone — before tackling the Barker Dam trail. From there, I parked at a picnic area.
I had packed a salad and leftover pizza in my trunk from dinner the night before. Cold pizza is fine, but as an experiment,
I put the open cardboard box on my Fiat’s dashboard in the 73-degree sun and walked away to eat my packaged salad.
Fifteen minutes later, I returned to find the pizza not quite hot, but warm and pliable. If I hadn’t been hungry, I might have put it back on the dash for a few minutes more, or experimented with the hot hood of my car. Instead I carried the pizza to the picnic table as my lunch’s second course and ate happily.
When you’re a rugged outdoorsman, you can’t expect everything to be perfect.
brIEfly
James Games, a video game arcade opened in Upland in 1978 by James Degner, is closing Wednesday. A favorite of generations of students from nearby Upland High, it touts itself as the last traditional arcade in the Inland Empire. Customers are invited to mask up and visit the
364 W. Foothill Blvd. arcade from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday for a farewell before James Games flashes the sad message “game over.”