A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Joshua Tree National Park

Blue sky, yellow sun, our tempers as red and as short as our water supply. All of us salt encrusted and glistening with sweat in the relentless 100-degree heat. We are stumbling through a massive jumble of granite boulders, their rough surfaces shredding bare skin like heavy grit sandpaper. Marty’s in the lead. Suddenly he screams in agonized surprise, twisting and falling! I clock a diamondback rattler slither away at speed. Thinking quickly, I drop my pack and rush to his side. The fang holes in his calf are eerily precise, premeditated, mechanical. “Stay still!” I command, as he writhes, thrashes and convulses. I squeeze the wound and then suck the venom from his twitching muscle. I spit the poison on to a scalding stone and wipe my mouth. “All right, boys,” I say, “I think it’s time for a cold beer.” Our friends Jacques, Jim and John gaze at me with awe and admiration. Marty grimaces his gratitude. He knows I’ve just saved his life but there’s really no need to thank me. We are men.

There are two fundamental plots in the stories we tell one another: man versus man, and man versus nature. Should there ever be a sports book on man versus nature, I’d take nature every time, game theory be damned. Aside from the noun, nature is not a human construct. It just is, and we’re in it, a part of it and not above it. Should the human species disappear, the planet we once tried to dominate will continue getting on with things, right itself without expensive therapy and antidepressants. National parks, nature somewhat unblemished, though a little less worse for wear, remind us of this.

We had stayed up rather late the night before agreeing an early start was essential. The next day’s forecasted high was a nice, round 100-degrees Fahrenheit. The high desert would be about ten degrees cooler. Five of us set off in two cars, heading west on Interstate 10; Tim elected to skip the excursion in order to gird for that evening’s proposed casino outing; he said he was going to text "WhoreDash" for lunch and watch a golf tournament. John and Marty were in the black Challenger. Marty likes to drive. Marty likes to drive fast. And if John decided to pull a Gram Parsons and get high in Joshua Tree National Park, Marty would get to drive the beast on pristine American blacktop. Jim drove the grey Toyota. Jacques was in the passenger seat rambling on a mile a minute because his carefully measured breakfast dosage of THC had kicked in. I know what Jim was thinking: “At least we’re not at the grocery store.” Hadn’t Jacques tried to buy everything at Costco last Sunday when the meds began their work in the cart corral? I was nested in the backseat, looking out the window, pleased I’d remembered to wear my glasses.

The landscape became strange almost immediately. There are a couple of thousand windmills at the west end of the Coachella Valley. Their propellers face east to harvest the Santa Anas which blow steadily from October through March. We drove through them before turning north to pick up the Twentynine Palms highway. I’m guessing we were a few hundred feet below sea level at the junction. And it was at that point the geology began to get really weird.

I’ve crossed a lot of boundaries in my life and so I was pleased to add the San Andreas Fault to the Continental Divide. It’s around the fault line where two of America’s four western deserts, the Colorado and the Mojave, mix, match and mingle. We climbed out of the transition zone entering the Little San Bernadino Mountains, driving through two hanging valleys, the Morongo and the Yucca, our ears popping nearly 3300 feet above sea level.

Marty had planned our route carefully. We continued east along Twentynine Palms Highway and entered the park at the north station. We would loop back west and exit the park outside the Town of Joshua Tree. Marty had also mapped out a couple of expeditions beyond the confines of our cars, aware that what he and Jim considered walks would constitute hikes for Jacques, John and me.

(Not wanting to be that guy, I spent the month prior to our trip gently attempting to upgrade my physical conditioning. God, you know, since my return I’ve learned that new habits are as difficult to keep as old ones are to break.)

My inclination as I write this post is to revert to cliché, to suggest Joshua Tree National Park resembles the surface of another planet. But it’s there and it’s here, isn’t it? I mean, I could be back inside its ranger gates inside the clock frame of an average working day. And I have seen the scrubby desert hills surrounding Kamploops, BC. I’ve seen desert and peculiar rock formations in Alberta’s Badlands. And I’ve seen a Joshua tree on an album cover. But I’ve never seen all those scenes together in one place.

Biblical Joshua was a thoroughly modern man, sort of like a local courier in our post-Amazon world or Rosie Ruiz, fresh to lead his people that last mile out of the desert to the finish line and conquer Canaan, that Promised Land. The Joshua tree is actually a yucca plant and was misnamed by Mormon pilgrims who imposed their own founding parallel “promised land” myth upon it, arms, spears or swords up. “This way!” Of course it should be noted that Mormons believe that Jesus spent the first-ever Easter long weekend in North America.

Our easy walk to Arch Rock, less than two miles there and back, was fraught. Poor Jacques was wearing enclosed sandals but no socks; the desert sand was insidious and gritty. Jim and Marty went off the trail (as is the wont of strangers, friends and relatives whose different perspectives have enriched my life) to clamber over and between granite boulders. What appears satin smooth from a distance isn’t. John and Jim, experienced scuba divers, compared the rock surfaces to coral; I thought of the new cheese grater back home in Edmonton in the kitchen cupboard. I realized very quickly I’m not as spry as I used to be. Atop the boulders but in a bowl of them, I lost my sense of direction which made me a little anxious as none of our party was in sight and a shout of “Here!” seemed to bounce from everywhere. Sideways between the giant ones in the merciful shade, I fretted about what else might be enjoying the cool seclusion, only to be annoyed by the intrusion of my flashing bare legs. And, really, Arch Rock wasn’t terribly grandiose, all that much to admire; it was just there, a geological accident whereas Skull Rock really lived up to its anthropomorphic billing.

Jim, a past visitor to Joshua Tree, told me the park was an entirely different experience after nightfall. Mind your step, but remember to look up. We were angle parked on a little lay-by, a few extra feet of Park Boulevard asphalt, and I looked around and realized there wasn’t a source of artificial light for miles in any direction. Jim has seen stars that I may never see. For a second I pondered the sanctity of preserved and conserved space in every dimension, the connectivity and totality of it all, national parks beautiful buffers against our baser instincts to develop and exploit. With the exception of the People’s Liberation Army’s activities in the South China Sea, nobody’s making any more land anymore. And I thought of the humbling importance of feeling insignificant amid the graduating immensity emanating from everything around us. A man’s got to know his place. But just for a second, because I was overcome worrying about just what the hell wakes up to work the night shift in a desert.

Our day trip then was only half the story of Joshua Tree. Still, Marty had planned our outing exquisitely. We finished up in the Joshua Tree Saloon, not too far from the park’s west station exit, his research, his planning, his call, pitchers of locally brewed Mexican-style lager on our table. Christ, I was thirsty and sometimes water just won’t do. Sitting there in southern California, I recalled a Montreal snowstorm in 1966. Marty and I grew up on the same street. We were in kindergarten together. We were stuck at school that day, snowed in and the yellow school bus stuck somewhere else. Marty said, “Fuck this, Geoffrey, I know the way home, let’s go.” So we did. He also helped me with my arithmetic for the duration of the 60s. And so, when the imaginary rattler bit him, what else would I do but act swiftly and decisively to save his life? 

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of rugged, manly outdoor adventurism since 2013. The novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com for links to purchase it in your preferred format from assorted retailers.