Desert Solitaire

“Wilderness. The word itself is music.” Edward Abbey

I have never spent much time in the desert. Having been born and raised in the South, my usual wilderness experience has been in the southern Appalachians where I walk on a thick, soft spongy carpet of thousand year old leaves and the trees above me offer both shade and moisture.

So, when Jack and I visited Joshua Tree National Park last week and spent some time in the desert, I was in awe of the sparse beauty that surrounded us. Certainly, the beauty of the desert has been written about extensively, most famously by Edward Abbey in his incomparable “Desert Solitaire“.

Following Mr. Abbey’s suggestion when he wrote, ” A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.”  Jack and I left our car in the parking lot and set off on foot to explore a bit of the desert.

It was an unusual time to be there as it was raining. Unfortunately, we were too early in the season to see the wildflowers which are famous for exploding into bloom in the rain. What we did see were astonishingly beautiful and unusual rock formations,

Edward Abbey wrote of the rocks, “Men come and go, cities rise and fall, whole civilizations appear and disappear-the earth remains, slightly modified. The earth remains, and the heartbreaking beauty where there are no hearts to break….I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real.” 

And, of course, we saw cactus, that amazing family of plants that can withstand some of the harshest conditions on earth with some of the most amazing survival techniques known in the natural world.

The Park’s namesake, the Joshua Tree, is not a cactus but a Yucca. Found almost exclusively in the Mojave Desert, the tree has roots that form a dense, shallow network that is impressively efficient in trapping any surface moisture. It is often called the “tree of life” since it is important for food and shelter for so many desert creatures.

The leafless beauty of Mountain mahogany and scrub oak silhouettes provided some of the most dramatic specimens in the Park. The black, intricate branches against the pale red and tan rocks were absolutely stunning.

The desert is rarely thought of as a place of joy. Usually when I think of desert life, I think of species fighting for survival, of animals desperate for water, of plants thin and weak between showers. But, Abbey found great joy in the desert and this passage is one to remember for all kinds of situations:

“Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.” 

As always, I have found lessons in the wild. In the desert I learned to find beauty in bare branches and spiney leaves and I was reminded of how essential wilderness is to our survival. Even if we can’t escape to the desert – or the mountains or the wetlands or any other remote place – these wilderness areas are critical to our well being. As Abbey says, “We need the possibility of escape as surely as we need hope.” 

The desert seems a funny place to find hope but there it is, in every sapling that begins so grow in a crack in the rock, in every cactus that survives extreme temperatures and little water, in every Joshua tree that escaped the perverse vandalism of thoughtless individuals. There it is in a desert that offers beauty, perseverance, and joy.