Carve impossible vistas.
Jumbled and stacked.
Boulders perch, tossed like balls.
Cracked spines.
Desert ice cream cones.
Joshua Trees twist in tortured poses.
Mother Nature’s iconic artistry.
A gift to treasure and protect.
Joshua Tree National Park encompasses almost 800,000 acres and straddles both The Mojave and Colorado Deserts in Southern California. Joshua Trees are not trees at all, but a variety of Yucca, sculpted into bizarre shapes by desert winds. The eerie rock formations were formed eons ago by cooling lava, that cracked and split from fault uplifting, and eroded over time by wind, water and sand.
100’s of species survive in this harsh desert landscape, despite summer temperature that reach well above 100 degrees fahrenheit. Native Americans inhabited this region for thousands of years and their artifacts remain scattered throughout the park. Be careful or you will walk right by them! We encountered this metate, or grinding stone, on a hike.
Cheers to you from Joshua Tree’s stunning and fragile ecosystem~
