Travel Photography > Desert Southwest > Joshua Tree National Park

At five in the morning we were racing across the desert to Hidden Valley. The white sands of Joshua are purple in pre-dawn; the trees arch and hang over the road, and become visible one by one, twisted and wrathlike; straight out of Sleepy Hollow or Stephen King. We pull up along the road, and I walk underneath boulders, and through them, and eventually, on top of them.

From here I can see five miles of trees, and a Jack Rabbit, the size of a small dog ditching his Chuparosa hideout. I find a Prickly Pear Cactus, and examine some lichen through my loupe - lime, aqua, red-orange and pitch. When dawn broke, we walked through Hidden Valley, a windless, completely rock enclosed valley.

A coyote had been following us.

I heard him, but couldn t see him. When Lily sat down for water, he made himself known beside a creosote - he was the most vividly rust Mexican wolf I have ever seen, beautiful and not emaciated like the ones who sit by the road waiting for some French tourists to throw them some bread. Lily never seems to be bothered by large mammals.

I urged us to keep distance, and soon, we were driving in the remotest of the Joshua Tree National Park roads, along Geology Tour and Lost Horse Mining Trail and up to Keyes View, a sight of 29 Palms and the Air Force Installation behind the next mountain range. We identified new species: desert mallow, death cactus, lupine and silver cholla. French bread. Gouda. Water. And we were on our way back to Los Angeles.

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