In the spring of 2014 we took a 2nd excursion to Joshua Tree, California. We experienced gone on a substantially more substantial desert highway trip the yr right before for our 20th anniversary and decided to return to the Joshua Tree spot specifically because it was the component of the journey that we identified most charming. Minimal did we know that it would be our previous excursion.

Now, every time we chat about exactly where we would go when I am well plenty of, Joshua Tree normally arrives up as the initial selection. Prior to seeing a serious desert, I unconsciously imagined it to be a great deal of the identical. Sand, bushes, cacti, repeat. But it turns out that deserts are unbelievably assorted ecosystems that are entire of life, even if significantly of that lifetime resides underneath the ground.

On that 2nd journey we stayed in an AirBnB in the Mojave desert in close proximity to a military services foundation and subsequent door to a compact date farm. It was this kind of a peculiar area to wake up each morning. Navy helicopters rolling above, and then, the silence of nothing but holes in the ground just about everywhere you appeared, and satisfied bees buzzing as they collected pollen from flowering creosote bushes immediately after a single of the initially rains of the season.

From that site we had been in a position to access a huge assortment of shocking landscapes and ecosystems. One of my favourite spots on the excursion captures why I am so drawn to the desert [See my post about this spot here]. As we drove up and over an unassuming mountain on our way to the Mojave Desert Preserve (listening to Sure enjoy I have Seen All Fantastic People for the hundredth time), I was bowled more than by an incredible, infinite vastness. From that substantial vantage you could see everything for miles and miles. Wanting down on that intense landscape, I felt so compact, a small little bit worried, and a great deal humbled. I felt these same inner thoughts on other areas of this vacation and the a person before. Little, humble, grateful.

We are nothing at all but very small blips on a significant world. But we have bought issues way out of equilibrium and our footprints are also massive. There are other areas in my daily life and in the vicinity of to household that serve as reminders of my location in the world, but there is a thing about the broad harshness of the desert that really drives it home.