Waiting for the crisis to pass, our thoughts go out to friends and loved-ones who also shelter in place. Old friends pass away, people we loved and admired. Immobilized for the time being, we can revisit destinations, near and far. join me in celebrating the joys of Quaranteam travel, the hope that these diversions might inspire us to value things we had taken for granted, to draw strength, wisdom and compassion from deeper engagements with nature.

Coachella Valley from Keys View, Joshua Tree National Park. October 11, 2017

We had come to Southern California to attend the opening of the exhibition California Mexicana, which Kathie had curated for the Laguna Art Museum. The show was part of the PST2 Pacific Standard Time LA/LA (Los Angeles/Latin America) cycle of exhibitions and cultural events funded by the Getty Foundation. We decided to fly out early to see the Visual Voyages exhibition at Huntington Library in San Marino curated by Daniela Bleichmar, and to spend a few days in the desert before heading to Orange County.

Joshua Tree National Park sits atop a plateau where the Mojave Desert to the north meets the Sonoran Desert to the Southeast. The park is named after a distinctive species known officially as Yucca Brevifolia, to the Spanish as Izote de desierto (desert-yucca), before receiving its popular name Joshua Tree from a band of Mormon settlers. Unearthly rock formations created by volcanism and erosion, cyclopean boulders and outcroppings sculpted by erosion provide a perfect backdrop for Westerns, science-fiction movies and automobile commercials.

Near Hidden Valley, Joshua Tree National Park. February 21, 2012

Heading south into the park from the town of Twenty-Nine Palms, one passes striking rock-formations with colorful names like Skull Rock and Hall of Horrors, where I nearly had a run-in with a deadly Southern Pacific rattlesnake. It and its cousin the Mojave Sidewinder have a distinctive pattern of green-and-buff coloration. Taking note of one another, we parted without incident. As Kathie and I withdrew from the site, we warned a group of youths in light raiment wearing flip-flops and suntan lotion not to proceed. Scornful of danger, and sage advice from their elders, they forged ahead. A ranger back at the visitor center brought out a loose-leaf binder.
“We have seven venomous species in the park. The one you saw is one of the deadliest, with three kinds of poison; a hemotoxin, neurotoxin and powerful flesh-rotting digestive enzymes. He was probably out looking to score another meal before going into hibernation.” I asked how many get visitors get bitten each year. Relatively few, he tells me. The ones who do usually provoked the creature, or threatened it in some way. People lose a lot of dogs out here by letting them run off the leash in warmer seasons when snakes are active. The nearest hospital is in Yucca Valley, at least a forty-five-minute drive from where I saw the rattler. No cellphone reception exists until comes within a few miles of Twentynine Palms.

Traveling southeast on the park road, one finds less abundant plant-life before entering a scorched wasteland at the foot of the Hexie Mountains. En-route to the Cottonwood Visitor Center at the southeastern portal is a large patch of fuzzy Cholla cactus, feared by hikers for its flesh-piercing nettles. The trail is well-marked, with frequent signage cautioning against touching the plants. Nevertheless, a small group of pretty Asian women in party-dresses and heels ran around taking selfies and othersies with no regard for their safety. A huge SUV arrives. Out steps a very large man in an evening-gown, having a Priscilla Queen of the Desert moment.Three men and a woman-photographer follow him through the Cholla garden as he strikes poses. His diaphanous yellow scarf streams in light breezes, its selvedge licking the Chollas.

William F. “Bill” Keys. Joshua Tree Rancher. 1879-1972

Throughout the park are scattered the ruins of played-out mines and failed farms. Russian immigrant William F. Keys (1879-1972) first came to Twentynine Palms to work in the Desert Queen Mine. He later filed a claim and established a ranch. The property is now located within the confines of the park. During a 1946 dispute Keys shot and killed an interloper. Convicted for murder, he did eleven years at San Quentin before winning a pardon due in large part to the efforts of lawyer and Perry Mason mystery-writer Erle Stanley Gardner.
One of the park’s frequently visited attractions is Key’s View—a rocky promontory at the edge of the plateau, along the northern rim of Coachella Valley. Once the seabed of an inlet reaching up from the Sea of Cortez, the valley floor is a mile below the overlook, traversed longitudinally by a low ridge marking the San Andreas fault.
To the south is Salton Sea, 230 feet below sea-level. Beyond that is the Imperial Valley, which once was part of the Colorado River watershed. Directly to the south are the San Jacinto mountains. Their eponymous peak has an elevation of just under eleven-thousand feet. Upscale communities including Palm Springs and Palm Desert spread out below its slopes. The head of the valley between Desert Springs and Banning to the west. Hundreds of wind-turbines rise up from dry earth, skeletal dandelions, their florets rotation majestic.

1930s aerial map of Coachella Valley. The area marked “Mud Hills” follows the San Andreas Fault. Joshua Tree National Park isidentified as “Valley of the Rocks”. Keys View is identified as “Summit Lookout”

The road descends perhaps a hundred feet to a long, looping turnaround. From the parking-area ascends a wide concrete foot-path to a viewing-area perhaps fifty feet above the road below. Looking across, the valley floor lies beneath a milky haze drifting east from Los Angeles, augmented by vehicle-emissions on The Ten passing through Riverside County. Unfolding my camp stool, Kathie wanders off to experiment with her new Leica digital camera.
Measuring the space, I map out a composition, noting the difference between the foliage on the slopes below and the Joshua Trees on the plateau above. A bus pulls in below. German tourists climb the path. A song-bird lands in the Piñon-tree beside me. I wet my brush, touch the half-pan of Ultramarine blue, wet it again and begin to paint.

At Key’s View aka Summit Lookout. October 11, 2017. Photograph by Katherine Manthorne

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