Day 7: Joshua Tree

shedoesthecity January 12, 2010

Waking up in Joshua Tree

The Day Without Driving

I wake up freezing at sunrise in a tent tucked beside giant rocks in Joshua Tree. The sun is just coming up over the mountains, and I manage to take some quick photos before running to sleep the rest of the morning in the car. By the time I wake up, Paul has hiked up a mountain in a mardi gras mask and started boiling eggs for breakfast. I wander around taking pictures of trees while Paul scales the giant rocks and hollers at me from the top. After cracking open some beers, we see a ship-shaped rock up the mountain in the distance, and decide to climb it. We hike through scrub and around cactuses, over rocks and halfway up a mountain, then start to scale the orange rocks as the sun sets. I settle halfway up to read while Paul scales the summit, and when he shouts from the top I can’t see him, and it sounds like he’s yelling from five different directions at once. As the sun goes down, we scramble back down the hill. We discover we don’t have a can opener, and in a moment that will go down in my personal history as a heroic triumph, I open our can o’ beans with a brick-shaped rock and a pointy piece of quartz. Paul cooks up the beans, rice, tomato and avocado and we scoop the steamy feast up with chunks of baguette clutched in freezing fingers. Delicious. The surreal twilight lasts ’til the end of our meal, and we last not much longer sitting on our blankets drinking beers on the rocks, and looking at the shooting stars, before we have to curl up in sleeping bags and fall asleep.