My old friends. More on this later.
Update: I was sure the heat in Barstow would begin to be unbearable
as soon as the sun came up, but to my surprise it wasn’t. I had checked the predicted temps for the
morning before I collapsed, and the high at about 11am was only supposed to be
about 80, which wasn’t bad at all. When
I closed my eyes it was about 57.
Barstow is just over 2,000 feet, so it benefits a little
from elevation in keeping it from being quite as terrible as the low parts of
the Mojave. Still, I felt like I was
being given a small blessing with the reasonable temperature, for which I was
grateful. I slept fitfully for a little
less than five hours. At somewhere
around 10:30 someone pulled in next to me and slammed doors. I came awake and while I could have used a
couple more hours, I felt the pressure to get up and get moving, not least
because I wasn’t in an out of the way spot at this TA, and I felt uneasy trying
to sleep through the active part of the morning. Home was only 380 away, and it seemed
pointless to not get the last push done with.
I managed to get myself together, went in and got a coffee
(at last!). I changed into a fresh set
of clothes, noticing as I did that the pants I’d been wearing for days had a
Route 66 label in them. I decided not to
get gas at the TA, since I was sure I had enough to get to Tehachapi, my next
stop. By the time I got the truck
started and the next stop punched into the GPS, I was feeling surprisingly
ok. The bright day and the wide desert
made the drive of the previous night seem like a distant, bad dream. I knew I had broken the back of the long
journey, and the rest would be comparatively easy.
I had been trying to remember if my route would take me
through the territory of my old friends, the Joshua trees. Joshua trees are funny creatures. They have been called “strange and horrible,”
and yet they were named for the way they reach up their branches to the sky,
like the Biblical Joshua lifting his arms to heaven. Their branches do often look like arms,
strange and twisted arms, topped by spiky foliage that reaches long fingers
into the sky. To me they look like
persons attempting to look very scary who, when you get to know them, turn out
to be not scary at all but really quite friendly.
I had looked for signs of them on the long drive from
Kingman, because their territory just edges into Arizona. But if they were hiding themselves in the
dark, I didn’t see. It was some way out
of Bartsow, after I’d left Highway 40, Route 66 and the Mother Road, that I saw
my first Joshua tree, a small, hopeful specimen off a ways from the road. The sight made me both sad and happy. Sad, because it reminded me of another time,
and of things irrevocably lost and beyond my power to save or reclaim. Happy, because they were indeed old friends
of mine, dating back to my childhood long before the sadness I allude to ever
was dreamed of.
The Joshua tree is a niche plant. It likes the desert spaces between about 1300
and just under 6,000 feet. It thrives in
the flats where it catches the runoff from surrounding mountains, and even
takes in snowmelt from the thin snows that often sprinkle the ground in winter
on the higher valleys and flats of the Mojave.
It is considered to be a member of the yucca family, but I seem to
recall there has been some discussion about which family it really belongs in. I think they are wonderful and unique and
there is nothing like them.
After an ill-considered detour to find the Boron visitor
center and the 20 Mule Team Museum, which turned out to be attached to the U.S.
Borax mine (the world’s largest open pit borax mine), I turned back when I
decided I didn’t want to take the trailer into a possibly dead-end drive. I was really just looking for a spot to take
a picture of a Joshua tree for you. I
could see them off in the distance, but needed one closer for a good picture.
Back on the highway, there was a sign for a rest stop, which
I decided to hit even though I didn’t technically need one. I was hoping there’d be Joshuas. And there were!
This fellow appears to have lost an arm. But he can grow another.
They bloom around Easter time, big, white, showy blooms. This year there was a spectacular bloom all over the population of Joshuas, and nobody knows exactly why. Some think its global warming, others think it is for some mysterious, secret purpose that only the Joshua trees know. I prefer this theory. The blooms are long done by now, and the seed pods are dried and waiting to disperse their contents.
I picked up a fallen pod from the ground.
Here's another fine specimen.
I wrote a nonsense song about Joshua trees that talks about how they have "furry knees." Here is the evidence.
Sometimes they can take really weird, wacked-out shapes, with arms that appear to be gesticulating wildly. The one in the background is an example. You can understand why they might make some folk uneasy, especially silhouetted against a flaming sunset sky when they look wild and other-worldly. But they are really cuddly and friendly. Trust me.
I spent one of the strangest, most magical and surreal nights of my life in a dense Joshua tree forest on the Cima Dome, when I was at the Mojave Desert Phone Booth (sadly, the phone booth is no more. You can read about it here. That was another adventure, in another time.)
A great place to see these guys is at Joshua Tree National Park. That park also has fantastic rocks, many of which offer opportunities for easy rock climbing that can be enjoyed even by those of us who are less than physically fit or agile. I find Joshua Tree National Park to be a tad too neatly tailored and tame for my tastes, but it's worth a visit and it's a great place to take kids. You can camp there (but it's popular, so you might need reservations). The time to go is in the fall, winter or spring. NOT in summer.
This rest stop was landscaped to meet the needs of weary desert travelers, so there were some distinctly non-desert trees and grass there. It was sort of funny to see conifers and broad-leaf trees and green grass alongside Joshua Trees. They really don't go together. But it was a nice rest stop anyway, and I was glad they had some Joshuas for me to visit and take pics of for you. This is the Boron rest stop, and there is another one across the road. A little less than 4 miles from Boron. Recommended.
I looked across the highway to the other side and saw a neat old travel trailer. It's always fun for me to see other vintage trailers. I like KD better though.
Oh Joshua trees!
You got furry knees
And you got spiky heads
But you never wear dreads!
Oh Joshua trees!
I know you're smilin' at me!
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