I spent a long day wandering through Joshua Tree National Park. This video shows a little of the beginning of that day, and I’ll probably be posting a couple other videos from this location as well. Joshua Tree has some iconic locations and sights, but its landscape is full of variety—towering boulders full of curves, harsh slopes of broken rock, and even wide open expanses of flat ground where the unique joshua trees stand watch.

The night before arriving here at Joshua Tree, I had intended to sleep at a highway rest stop near one of the National Park’s entrances. Having taken what was probably the strangest route possible from the dunes I visited with to Joshua Tree, I ended up finding a less traveled roadway and pulled off there for the night. It was much quieter than any highway rest stop, and the night sky soon blossomed with stars. Occasionally, I’d hear a wild screech from somewhere in the distance—some sort of owl, maybe? Whatever it was, wild sounds mixed in with the silence of night, and in the company of stars, is always something I enjoy. It has a way of reminding me of my own wildness as I slip off to sleep and toward dreams.

Upon entering Joshua Tree National Park, I wandered the roadside cholla garden for a while, enjoying the way the morning light played in amidst the cholla. I couldn’t help but imagine how different it would look midday, in late evening with the low sun, or at night aglow with moon light. No place is ever the same. No moment is ever the same. How often, I couldn’t help but think, I fail to see the magic in a place simply because I tell myself “I’ve been here before.” I need to stop telling myself that, I suppose.

From the cholla garden, I made my way to a gathering of large boulders and couldn’t help but pull over and wander through them for a while. I moved slowly and carefully, becoming more and more intrigued by how much the shapes around me seemed to change with each step I took—each new place I stood offered new vantage points, revealed new contours or shadows. The boulders allowed passage for me to not only move around them, but over them, through them, and sometimes even beneath them.

There was a sense of invitations being whispered out from this desert place—an invitation to explore further, but also a reminder to not get ahead myself to the point that I loose connection with the land. It almost felt as if there was a dividing point I could sense within this invitation—like a trail splitting off into two directions. I can’t even find the words right now to describe exactly what these two “trails” represented. But one felt pushy, forceful, and too weighed down with logical thought. It felt lonely and blind. The other “trail,” or potential approach to the day ahead of me, felt more free flowing like the wind and the sands I witnessed at the dunes the day before. It didn’t feel lonely, but it felt full of the company of the very landscape that surrounded me—the very ground beneath my feet. It was not a forceful way of movement based on thoughts, but a drifting—almost dreamlike—way of movement deeply rooted in feelings—my own feelings, but also those that were finding me from the curves of the sun-baked rock, from the shadows that tenderly explored where the light could not reach, from the tufts of grass dancing in the breeze, from the lizard sunning itself nearby…all these things, or so it felt, were inviting me to join them more fully as I moved about the landscape this day. I felt my limitations immediately, but I chose in that moment to make the best attempt I could.

From that step on, I did my best to move with the land instead of alone. I’ll post the other videos of this place soon. The landscape continued to offer unique perspectives, and while I’ve visited Joshua Tree a number of times in the past, this visit was something different for me.