joshua tree national park

a short piece written for a travel writing course at UCLA

accompanied by film photographs

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As my GPS pin glides further from home and closer to camp, cell service starts to fade. With each lost bar comes another permission slip to disconnect. Once again, I’m heading to Joshua Tree National Park for a solo camping trip.

Sitting at the meeting point of the Colorado and Mojave deserts, it’s a vast, unyielding place that I’m lucky enough to visit a few times a year. October through May is the most popular time to visit, but I prefer the quieter summer. It's exceedingly hot, with average July temperatures hovering above 98 degrees, but I’ve become addicted to the natural sauna.

There’s a release in letting the heat win, living with it instead of fighting for comfort every second of the day. I feel it most when pushing to reach the 360-degree view at the peak of Ryan Mountain. Looking out, it’s as if an artist was given four colors to paint 1,200 square miles of canvas and somehow made every inch distinct. It’s there I become the desert. My legs the sunbaked branches of the Joshua trees, my throat the dry riverbed snaking through the arid plain 1,000 feet below.

A gift awaits me at camp, tucked in my cooler: ice-cold water. It’s more than quenching, it’s a rare event. A flash flood rushing past my lips, the only thing moving through me in that moment. Once again, the Joshua Tree heat has made the lingering reminders of home evaporate, distilling everything I need into my little plastic cup.