Today’s accompanying tune: “Home” by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros
“One last question. Which is your favorite park?”
I was interviewing for a job with a nonprofit organization that worked on conservation initiatives in U.S. National Parks, and my not-yet boss was sitting next to me in her office in Oakland. She had joked that this was the make-or-break interview question, the one that separates those that want the job from those that care. It was 2017, and I cared a lot, about everything, all of the time. I was desperate to leave my tech job — I was tired of feeling like I was doing more harm than good in telling average people to invest in make-believe internet money. What could be more different than leaving the realm of digital Monopoly money for real-word work conserving some of the most breathtaking landscapes I had ever seen, and those I never would?
“That’s easy. Joshua Tree.”
I went on to explain that, though I had only visited for the first time earlier that year, I was struck by the resilience of the desert, and the way that most people miss how full of life it is because they don’t look closely enough. That every plant, animal, and person had been uniquely evolved to survive in an environment marked by extremes. Though the wildlife is more grand in Glacier National Park and Yosemite more iconic, Joshua Tree was a place that felt humble in its awesomeness. In a way, it felt like a place where the underdogs always win. The bonus point I added was that it was uncompromisingly weird.
One of the other interviewers who was listening in via phone piped up almost immediately.
“She gets it!”
Another voice cut in, saying that if I liked Joshua Tree I would love Mojave National Preserve. Less fanfare, he said, more solitude. More weird than anything you could find in Joshua Tree, and the best night skies of anywhere he had ever been. It was his favorite place in the country.
Both of them had chosen to live in the Mojave Desert — the first voice (Shane) lived in Joshua Tree in a rented one-bedroom apartment near Joshua Tree Saloon and would eventually come to be my one-man welcome band when I moved to town. The second (David) officially lived in a house in Barstow, but more accurately in his car as he spent more time criss-crossing the desert than stationary back in town. They both cared deeply about the desert, and my answer had been more than satisfactory. Those that get it, get it. By the end of the day, I had gotten it, and therefore, the job.
When I started telling people I was moving to Joshua Tree, they always responded with one of three questions:
Isn’t it too hot there?
Are you afraid of snakes?
What do you do for fun there?
The questions people ask say a lot more about themselves than they think. In a way, they wanted to express their own discomfort with living in a place they had only ever vacationed. They were scared of snakes, and of the heat. They needed to stay busy, to get Amazon same-day delivery, to get an Uber. The inconvenience of living in the desert was too much, a trip back in time before on-demand groceries and limitless entertainment. A good place to unplug and reset for a weekend, sure, but not somewhere to build a life in this decade.
Even now, I get similar responses when I tell people where I live. It’s most common from people that currently live in large or medium cities, who, at their most adventurous, maybe lived in the suburbs. Each time I explain that, yes, we have electricity and water, but no, we don’t use Uber, I watch their face gloss over from mild curiosity to “that could never be me,” a dismissal of understanding so deep as to thwart any possible crossing.
What I try to get across — though I suspect I often fail at doing so — is how much is lost when we live solely for convenience. I’d much rather wait a little longer and move a little slower in exchange for the ability to notice things around me. To learn the distinct calls of the birds living in the tree out my front door. To watch the juvenile coyote mature into a pack leader. The notice when the desert looks green, even when it still looks brown to the untrained eye. To see the life in the desert that most others miss, and to savor the ebbs and flows that come with living in a natural rhythm. Living inconveniently, maybe counterintuitively, values time above all else. Time moves differently, slower but also all at once. A rock formation that took thousands of years to erode in just that way is exactly the same as yesterday, but also entirely different. The plant that appears to be a lost cause one week will be in full bloom the next. With patience comes trust, and trusting that time will bend and curve its way through the desert is the only constant I know.
Not everyone chooses to live in the desert — some are assigned here, some just end up here. Some are pulled here through obligation, family or otherwise. And there are drawbacks, of course, to living in a place like the desert — reliable, high quality healthcare is hard to come by, for starters, as are reliable, well-paying jobs. For those that don’t choose to live here, the inconvenience can be all-consuming, a living cell from which they can only dream of escaping.
For those that choose to live here with all its inconvenience and short-comings, and even those that didn’t choose it but have grown quite fond of it, the reward is nothing short of magical. There is what I like to call Big Magic — sunrises in the summer months while we’re out doing yard work and trying to beat the heat of the day. Big Magic is watching bighorn sheep roam across the rocks while we’re taking a breather during a hike. But more often there is small magic, like watching a mated pair of doves raise one set of chicks after another in the eaves of my home. Or watching as my newly planted native cacti slowly, slowly, reach upwards and outwards as they grow. The magic here is infinite, if only we have the time to witness it.
Living in a tourist destination is also its own challenge, but what I find most striking is how, when a tourist visits on any given day, their memories of Joshua Tree are essentially frozen in time, a static image of an incredibly dynamic place. Though it seems as if the desert is always the same, always dry, always brown, it is alive at its edges, for those that know where to look. Those that know how to see how the rain carves fresh paths through the dirt or the smallest movements among the bushes. To visit a place once is to capture it in a photo; to live there is to know it as intimately as you do a friend. Living in an inconvenient place is to not only know it, but to understand it and become part of its own story in a way that changes you both.
A few years ago, David took a new role at the nonprofit that relocated him to the Southeast, a world away from the mountains and Joshua trees he spent decades trying to protect. Shane, too, moved on, from the nonprofit and from the desert, a new chapter of his life unfolding in the Pacific Northwest. They visit periodically, rooting themselves in the nutrient-poor soil for as long as they can before returning to their new respective homes. The years they both spent in the desert went as if they was just a moment, time playing its tricks all over again.
But the desert, this place, left its mark on them in a way that I hope it does for me. An honor and appreciation for those that thrive in hard places, the underdogs more often victorious than they are thwarted. A recognition of the role small magic plays in making our lives feel whole, and a habit of tending towards the inconvenient option. A life marked, easily and recognizably, by its time in the dirt, in the dust, among the Joshua trees. An understanding of what it means to choose to live somewhere most people would find inconvenient.
Here’s to making the inconvenient choice, the patient choice. And, as always, more time outside.
- Megan
Beautiful article!
This is beautiful and resonate so deeply with me. Last summer I moved to Arizona to work at an environmental nonprofit, largely because I fell in love with nature here. Witnessing the rhythms of life in the Sonoran Desert has been on of the great joys of my life, the perfect invitation to slow down and look ever more closely at the world. Your writing makes me eager to spend more time in the Mojave. Thank you for this!