I sat outside a stripmall cafe with my laptop and an iced coffee at 8:30 in the morning, looking up directions on their wi-fi. I was finally leaving Las Vegas, escaping the crush of the crowds and the time-share salesman who had threatened my life. I was going to look for the Joshua Trees.
My adventures, thoughts on evolution, and lots of my photos of Joshua Trees, Desert Flowers, and the Toiyabe National Forest behind the cut!
I talked cameras with a nice guy who pedaled up on a Trek bicycle and suggested that I skip Lake Mead and visit the Toiyabe National Forest. "No 4-wheelers, more trees, and better birds", he said, "But watch out for cactus knee." "Cactus knee?" I queried. "Yep." He said, proudly displaying his scarred shins. "Don't drop to macro anything without checking where your legs are going. It's almost never worth the shot, and the cacti usually win the bout."
I considered this, thanked him, re-applied sunblock to my newly crispy nose and headed for the desert. I was thrilled when I started to see little scrubby Joshua Trees in the fields by the highway, but nothing prepared me for turning off the main road into the Toiyabe National Forest.
I stopped the car. The weather was windy and surprisingly cool with a few wispy cirrus clouds keeping watch at the bottom of the gigantic sky. I grabbed a sweater and my camera, packed a few liters of water in my satchel, and went to go look at the world. I walked lightly, but knee high jackrabbits loped effortlessly across my path and suspicious lizards scuttled away from my careful approach. Luckily the Joshua Trees thriving in the high desert were patient with me, the camera happy gawker, holding their poses beautifully.
I'd never seen a living Joshua Tree, but had read all about them. They grow very slowly, adding about 10 cm a year and can reach 15 meters. They live up to 200 years and are pollinated solely by Yucca Moths who lay eggs only in their flowers. The growing larvae of the moths eat the seedpods letting just enough seeds mature to produce the right number of trees for their environment. The Joshua Trees and the Yucca Moths are completely dependent on each other for survival. I was pretty lucky in seeing the trees in pod. They don't flower every year. On some trees the flowers were intact with baby seedpods starting at their tips.
The ripening seedpods were the size of my hand.
They were incredibly beautiful. I can't say that I was not tempted by their shiny round greenness. I was. Deeply. I wanted one. Badly. But fear not as years of Girl Scouting have left their mark. My mantra is:
Take only photographs, Leave only footprints(and as few of those as you can manage).
Creationists choose to believe that the Joshua Trees and their moths are just one more piece of attractive background noise to our semi-divine existence, designed and dropped in wholecloth 6,000 years ago. After all, if you consider your time on our blue pixel as a bathroom break on the road to eternity, it must be hard to see anything particularly remarkable about a sophisticated interdependent system of life that has nothing to do with human beings. Tree souls don't go to heaven.
Living in Snow Country, a place of much precipitation, we often take water for granted. Our trees have thin broad leaves and we have to lay down the law of the trowel to keep our jealously marshaled gardens from bursting forth with volunteers- succulent, flowering, seed spewing, uninvited guests. Things are different in Desert Country and I found myself scanning desperately for color on the rocky ground. Although the air seemed dry as a bone to my chapped midwestern lips, it had rained a week ago and there was an astonishingly diverse range of flowers. Vibrant splashes of white, yellow, purple, and shocking crimson were fierce in their attempts to gain the attention of fickle pollinators.
The sage became lusher, thicker, and greener as I ventured down a canyon path. The ghost of water possessed the dusty creek bed. A twisted flowering tree went for broke attracting huge swarms of insects and hopeful narrow leafed shrubs conserved their resources while waiting patiently for rain.
I experienced a strange shock of recognition: Here were Joshua Trees, but less frequent and smaller. They had seemed happier in the high desert among the scrub cactus and jackrabbits than in this shaded canyon.
There were smooth sandstone boulders under a small gathering of Bristlecone Pines and I lay on my back for a while, drinking a liter of water and staring at the pieces of blue visible through twisting branches. I watched Oak Titmice (a life lister for me!) chasing insects and arguing tsicka-dee-dee-dee, and was surprised and charmed to hear the familiar lilting cries of Mockingbirds. The rock was warm, the air was cool, and the planet was quietly alive.
I love our little round world. There is so much beauty and wonder in our pixel just as it is that I have a hard time seeing the need for redemption and sin. Religion happens when people feel the need for more than they can see and so often it clouds what they are able to perceive. I don't believe that all religion is bad and I certainly don't think that all religious people are misguided, but I don't want to go to their heaven if the souls of the Joshua Trees won't be there.
Driving slowly out of the Toiyabe National Forest, I flipped on the radio on and set it to scan. After a few minutes of static, a station playing 60's music crackled into focus.
"Purple haze all in my brain. Lately things just don't seem the same", crooned Jimi.
"Actin funny, but I don't know why", I howled along.
"'Scuse me while I kiss the sky.", sang the Joshua Trees.
Remember, it isn't the photographer, or the camera, but the world that is beautiful! Please share your photos of our beautiful world in the comments and give folks a reason to pitch in and try to keep it that way. Call/write/email your congresscritters and representatives today. Please remind them of how much we have to lose by giving in to the big coal companies, continuing to rely on fossil fuels, and by not leading the fight on global warming. Earth may not be the best planet in the entire universe, but it's certainly the nicest one that I've ever seen.
I use http://www.flickr.com for my photos. It's easy to use, gives you easy copy/paste html for posting, and anyone/everyone can get an account there for free. :)
love,
Snowcountry