The primary industry of the California desert is weirdness. This area generates more per-capita weirdness than anywhere else in America, beginning with the Joshua tree. (Of course, it helps that there are so few capitas residing there.)
The Joshua tree acquired its name because early religious pioneers think it looked like Joshua holding up his arms to stop the sun from setting. Personally, I believe that those early religious pioneers were a little too affected by the sun. When fully mature, the tree is branched like a common or garden variety tree, but covered in short cactus-ish spines instead of twigs and leafs. Joshua Tree National Park has, logically, the largest concentration of Joshua trees in the world. It's also well known for three other things: high quality rock climbing, an abrupt transition between high desert and low desert, and...well, read on.
Scene: the Wonderland of Rocks area, late afternoon, in springtime, the best time of year to visit Joshua Tree.
Offstage: a boyfriend in the car, at the campground, or somewhere in the distance; his only role is to reduce my reluctance to follow a long haired bearded grizzly stranger.
Character #1: Long Haired Bearded Grizzly Stranger
Character #2: Me.
Open with: Me, doing some half-baked form of bouldering up rocks, hiking, scrambling, and (mostly) falling off.
LHBGS comes up to me and says: "Wanna see where they fried Gram Parson's ass?" Doesn't bother with "Hello" or "Excuse me, I've misplaced my flying monkey, can you help me find it?" or any of the usual social niceties.
Me (furiously trying to remember who Gram Parsons was) "Sure."
I follow him around a bit, over, under, and around rocks. He seems to be of the desert-rat variety of bearded grizzly rather than the ex-hippie species, but really, who can tell? We come to a flat slab, black with the remnants of a campfire. There's some words scrawled on nearby rocks arranged in a verse fashion. They might be rock lyrics. Or not. I can't tell.
LHBGS (gesturing vaguely): "That's it."
Me: "Cool." I mean, what else am I supposed to say?
LHBGS disappears. If this were a movie, he'd disappear in a blinding flash of light, but if this were a movie, it would also be very short.
Does LHBGS just wander around the desert pointing out the cremation of a moderately famous 1960s-70s country-rock singer to everyone who crosses his path? Joshua Tree was home to Pinto Indians and gold miners long before rock singers found its stark beauty. I compare the weirdness of this moment with some local weirdness. There's the Cabazon Dinosaurs, two enormous roadsite attractions now run by Christian fundamentalists to explain errors in Darwin's theory of evolution, and the ocotillo, a plant with a remarkable resemblance to rebar. There's the world's largest wind park, where you dare not insult the wind turbines by calling them "windmills," and the teddy bear cholla cactus (cute and cuddly from a distance -- but it jumps!), and our local answer to Groundhog Day, Mojave Max, who this year emerged from hibernation on February 24. There's the NPS' complete stonewall denial of Gram Parsons' cremation; the park service has moved the slab and occasionally sandblasts off the lyrics. As I continue to scramble among the rocks, I realize that yes, LHBGS probably does need to tell this story to every stranger he meets. Some stories fit their places, and some stories define them.