Joshua Tree, CA

Abstraction

In Joshua Tree, God the abstract artist laid enormous boulders in gentle little arrangements throughout the desert. Park rangers paved a loop road through them, and set up stations to charge admission. The people come.

For such a small park, it is busy. Rock climbers swarm its boulders, doing their tedious business in the short daylight hours all winter long. You can tell the regulars; they break the sound barrier as they drive around tourists. Their Subarus are the dirty ones.

For others of us, there is the scenery. Multiple one-mile loop hikes (designed for everyman) take us into otherworldly arrangements of rock and sand and huddled little desert plants. The placards teach us about the delicate microbial universe that makes up the crust of the sand. I tread lightly. I climb on the boulders. A Girl Scout-type kid looks up and asks me how the view is. Her grandmother presses her on down the trail.

In the new year, I am thinking about how these travels will come to a close in a few months. I am trying not to think about it too much, but when I do, it mutes the wanderlust that has cast everything so beautiful in my eyes. I am distracted.

“You’re never going to be finished with this trip,” my mother reassures me. “I want you to visit Natchez and Vicksburg. I have a lot more people for you to visit.”

Those places in Mississippi will be rich in people, but not in the aloneness that I have on the road. I will miss filling up my water bottle from a gallon jug on the floor of the backseat.