Desert Dwellers

Part 2: More Death, More Valley

While walking through Golden Canyon, Sarah and I were passed by two French girls in a dead sprint yelling, "C'est trop beau! C'est trop beau!" (It's too beautiful). I thought Sarah and I were doing a good job of enjoying the effects of lots of wind and lots of time on lots of rocks, but our reaction in comparison was woefully inadequate. It's a beautiful thing to see utter joy and realize, "Oh! That's how you're supposed to live!" I hope one day I can find something so beautiful I have to run.

The next day we left the Death Valley (note: I saw very little death on the whole. 40 mph Wind Valley, Dehydration Valley, and Ecstatic French Girl Valley are all more appropriate names for it) for the surprising lushness of Joshua Tree. In retrospect, I shouldn't have been too surprised about the relative abundance of life in JT. "Tree" is, after all, a living thing and that's right there in the name. Joshua, I'm pretty sure is usually alive too. This is not an association that Death Valley currently enjoys.

On the road to Joshua Tree is a town called Baker that exists only to clump all of the world's fast food restaurants in the same place for easy access. Sarah and I took mustard packets from the DQ and made our own salami and salami sandwiches while parked in the wasteland that is the Arby's parking lot. This leads me to the next point, of who would actually want to live in the desert.

A few hours down the road we came across the loose collection of plots of land that is home to recluses, shut ins, aging cowboys, and dead bodies no one's yet discovered. After driving through 50 miles of slightly inhabited, nearly uninhabitable land, we had yet to see a gas station or a supermarket, but there were a handful of churches. Maybe they were doing double duty, selling unleaded holy water, and Cliff Bar communion wafer, but I somehow doubt it.

Off the top of my head I can think of a few very significant pros to living in a big sandbox:
1. If the apocalypse ever happened, you'd be the last to know. Even better, absolutely nothing would change for you.
2. You can do anything you want in the desert, much the way you can do anything you want to when you're Will Smith in "I Am Legend," or when you're locked in solitary confinement. Fun!
3. You never have to worry about watering the plants, since they're all rocks which require little to no water.
4. If you've got really greasy skin, the climate will fix that problem, much the way that you can fix the moisture problem of a steak by turning it into jerky.
5. You're Mel Gibson and want to live out the rest of your days as Mad Max.

However, there are a few notable cons:
1. The people living around you in every single direction are crazy.
2. You are also crazy.
3. You've decided to shun the civilized world, yet are still dependent on it for weekly groceries, and or, you've bought 60 years worth of Mr. Pibb and Slim Jims and you're just going to eat that for the rest of your life.
4. The fence around your property is to keep out the pack of coyotes that want your Mr. Pibb.
5. The pack of coyotes have already killed you and no one will ever notice because you have no visitors, no friends, and all of your neighbors have also been eaten by coyotes or have turned into beef jerky.

So what I'm trying to say, is that while you might romanticize the idea of getting away from it all, if you do, you'll go insane and die a horribly dehydrated death at the bloody muzzles of feral pack animals. On the other hand, if you also romanticize going insane and dying a horribly dehydrated death, then you might just be a desert dweller, Mr. Gibson.

Hey Mel, you wanna have a tofurkey dog with me and Jesus? Yeah, you do.