Joshua Tree Park, Pushwalla Canyon - Aug 27

Joshua Tree National Park, August 27, 2008
Alluvial Fan Base, edge of Sonoran/Western Colorado - Mojave Desert Transition Zone Pushwalla Canyon opening, mouth of Little San Benardino Mountains, elevation 1,200 feet.

Greetings: This is the first report and outing of the "official" visit to the peripheries of JTNP, and officially marks the season of my affiliate writers residency. Its been a long and irritating day, stuffed into my "too small" Palm Desert home for yet another "cabin fever" afternoon - cabin fever being the reverse, in the Coachella Valley Desert, of arctic winter in Fairbanks Alaska or an extended blizzard of months in North Dakota. We experience the reverse of "ice." Everything melts, and then melts more, until the earth itself is one parched nutshell. The garden I've planted has gone entirely brown. So long, beautiful mint, happy sunflower faces, the sprawl of early summer poppies and tomatoes and canteloupe and zucchini. The lovely orange marigolds are dried memories. There is nothing quite like the end of a three month stretch of dead flat heat, day and night, that's sizzled all civility out of me, out of my roommate and my daughter, even the dogs, who spread eagle themselves on the floor, too apathetic to even bark at the new neighbors moving in next door. Even the pool water is dis-inviting, overheated and over-chlorinated.

And next week, I start another semester of teaching at College of the Desert. A summer spent working on a literary anthology, not escaping the heat for more than a day or two at a time to the slightly-cooler Riverside, CA area, to stay at my friend Jeff's apartment, 10 or 15 degrees cooler, and he doesn't believe in air conditioning. We don't cool interiors there; we work on making books happen. A lot of books. I'm even sick of poetry and chapbooks by now. I'm sick and tired of being a desert anthology editor, a labor of love and hate and every emotional gamut in between. Been working on that for more than two years, the publisher is keeping me tracking across the landscape meeting deadline after deadline, and especially this summer, I feel like I've crossed the Mojave Desert on the Bradshaw Trail or the old Mojave Road at least a dozen times, back and forth, subsisting on small sips of tepid water at infrequent water holes with names like Soda Springs and Dos Cabezas Preserve.

And I have only the summer memories, this year, of a few stolen hours to Idyllwild, to sit on a vacationing friend's pine-surrounded porch; an afternoon on the back spine of the Santa Rosa Mountains, past where old Desert Steve etched his "end of the world" prophecies onto burnt out trees, and next to the song trickle of Dripping Spring (felt bad when the big dog, Brindle, peed repeatedly on the water jug sitting there to cool off, that belonged to a ham radio operator who was camping up there in order to get a good worldwide signal; thank God he wasn't looking and I DID rinse the jug off, several times.) And, yesterday, a twilight drive to the open vista at the base of Pushwalla Canyon, which squirms out of the Little San Bernardino Mountains, west side of Joshua Tree National Park boundaries, humps itself over, with a laugh, the Colorado River Aqueduct road (think: flash flood revenge,) and spills onto one big alluvial fan that profers a few dirt roads, myriad broken bottles and empty shotgun shells, and tonight, on my mad, dust-arousing escape from the designer desert where I live - you know, the 3 BR, 2 BA, swimming pool, 2 car garage, with 2 cars in it - place I call home.

Hard to believe I'm only 20 minutes out Washington Street, over the I-10 Freeway Bridge, past the long draft of Sun City, and then, through the winding and mystical Coachella Valley Preserve with its shocking palm oasis hugging several hillsides - those odd tree groups left over from wetlands era, when dinosaurs relaxed on these plains; the palms without heads, often the result of fires, or just plain fatigue, look like telephone poles and are very disorienting on the open horizon - ahhh.....finally.....cross over Dillon Road, that stretches from Desert Hot Springs over to Indio Hills.....dirt road....past an odd camp that's been here all summer without shade two dilapidated pickup trucks, a few mangy dogs that bark a storm for about 2 seconds when I drive by, and no people in sight.

I've found my way, barely, once again, to the fringe of open desert, as I've always done in every desert I've lived in, where the roads turn to dirt and the lone woman turns to a slightly less teeth and jaw gritting, poorly adapted member of the human whirlpool just miles behind my back. In short, I feel like a real bitch right about now, and my mood isn't improved a whole lot when I realize how dark it's getting so quickly - fall equinox, in spite of these "armaggedon is just one block away" weather days, is close at hand, and yes, the days are shortening. I'm going to have to put on the hiking boots with orange socks, because I couldn't find anything else, and hope my tiny flashlight works. I'm in no mood to talk to a rattlesnake right now. I might end up saying something mean. The desert excursion has just begun. I have a whole season to go. And I find, stepping out of the car and grumbling a little, that a fresh breeze is clearing the energy, on the higher reaches of the east side of the valley, and it's dry and warm, not at all laden with the pungent humidity of the soup I left behind, my house, situated just above sea level and a few feet and maybe a mile from the old beach of Ancient Lake Cahuilla. I am beginning to breathe. The first few stars are not mocking me; they are calm.

Aug 28, 2008

Part 2 to follow soon