A Broken Promise

I know I said I would write about Iceland next, but I’m here to break that promise. Even though it was only a lightly made statement.

I don’t usually think much of promises anyway. That may make me sound like a shitty human. Or maybe it actually makes me a shitty human. But I don’t make them often. I can’t see myself overcoming the temptation of free will because I made a vow that I would see a newly released movie with a certain person.

However, there are certain promises that I willingly keep, or at least remind myself I need to keep. Promises to something bigger than just one person. A promise to think about how my choices affect the environment and/or a group of people and then act accordingly. And dayum it is a hard promise to keep. Anyone who has found themselves spending $500 in Target on a Tuesday night because their internet went down can attest to that.

I recently read an old National Geographic article, (I will give you one guess as to where I was and what I was doing when I came upon said article) and it was pre Trump. It was straight-up foreshadowing the budgetary cuts that may be made regarding federal lands. The whole issue focused on saving our oceans, but one statement stuck with me. In 1870, many believed that the landscape of Yellowstone sounded too fantastic. Then photographs started circulating, and BAM, conservation was suddenly a little more important. I can only imagine seeing a photograph of Yellowstone at that time. All I would be thinking is: we better save that shit long enough for me to hop on the nearest horse and head west!

Now, pictures of US National Parks are the default backgrounds on our Macs. Those photos hang in dental offices, in classrooms, peeling at the edges and creased from being folded and refolded. We know those places are beautiful and that they are out there. Their importance is not questioned, only forgotten.

So for all the times I have broken my promise of picking the most eco-friendly way to work, and for every time I watched a new epi because I couldn’t wait, here are some pictures from a few national parks along with a small (very small) memory from each. The purpose behind the photos is to make other people say: we better save that shit long enough for me to hop on the nearest plane and head west! or east! or north! or south! Wherever you’re from and wherever you might want to go, enjoii.

Petrified Forest National Park

This park felt like a dream. Kath and I had been haulin’ ass to get me to my current assignment in California. The wind whipped us, frothing our hair and making a snap story absolutely impossible. Halfway there and we had just managed to catch the sunset. Nothing crazy happened, we just made a bunch of stunned faces at each other, almost caught the meaning of life on a hike, and watched in terror as a coyote/wolf creature narrowly escaped being hit by our car. It was wild and somewhat untouched. It was beautiful.

 

Grand Canyon National Park

This one has been a long time coming. I also like to think of the pioneers who came across this huge hole in the earth and what went through their minds. The covered wagon a chatter about how crazy it is that there is a dent in the earth that big. Meanwhile, Native Americans are over in the corner like “Yeah, dude. We know. We been done know about this awesome ditch”.

I guess I get what people mean when they say that they don’t know what to do after looking at the canyon (that is, if they are not hiking it). I kind of get it. But to me, this sight was what it needed to be and more. It felt like you could fall into oblivion at any moment, and it had that effect on the brain as well.

Death Valley National Park

This park is just badass. The grit clings to your skin, hanging in the air are more particles ready to cling to any other piece of skin that may be exposed. The roads that lead there from the south and the west are through miles and miles of crispy flat beds of the same kind of grit. It gets hard to tell if  the pastels on the far away mountains are just a trick of the mind, as the rest of the landscape remains hopeless as all hell. Let this be an ode to a part of the country where pioneers ended up melting because they thought it was a nice place to settle down and collect borax. Natural selection at its finest.

Death Valley was one of my first times camping alone. It was also the first time I had to call 911 for anyone, but that’s another story. My most memorable moment here was driving up to Dante’s point. The layers of pinks, purples and blues abruptly melting into white salt pools hundreds of feet below. The winds and turns to the top forced the fog in my mind to lift as I worried about falling off the edge or scraping an oncoming car on the narrow road. I accelerated at the last bend to reach the top and found myself speeding into the parking lot, a man on a red motorcycle yelling at me to slow down.

He quickly forgave me. As I made my way towards the edge to take in the rising sun, he stopped me and asked me to take a picture of him on his bike. He handed me an older digital camera and placed his bike precariously on the curb that separated the parking lot from the sharp descent down into the dry valley bed.

Up until this moment in my life, I loved taking pictures for people.  Old couples retired and living out of their RV, parents trying to wrangle in their wild, oblivious children, it was all cute. Not this motherfucker though.

I mean he was an old, scraggly, 70 year old motorcycle adventurer. He was also the worst. I kid you not, I took at least 50 pictures of the guy in the exact same position. I reviewed each photo and commented on why I could improve the angle, or maybe the amount of exposure. I finally found approval, only to find he was ready for his next pose. I took one last picture of him straddling his bike, and asked him to take my picture. The sun came out, my face was a blob of white, and he handed me my phone showing the most garbage photo of me, and walked away. I walked away, there were no words.

After watching the sun fully rise, made my way off of the rough, cool rocks and headed back towards the parking lot. Guess who was waiting there, bandana in place and gigantic camera in hand. It took everything I had in me to not start laughing like a lunatic. This guy! How was it that I was destined to be in this magical place, in this magical moment, with this guy?

He pointed over to a new background he wanted to try out. At this point, I accepted the hand the universe dealt me. I took so many pictures that I am amazed that I didn’t develop Stockholm Syndrome. Would I ever see my family again? Would my life ever exist past this lens of hell.

And then it hit me. I had fucking met Dante riding around on his very own point in his very own red crotch rocket. The desert is beyond mystical. I will forever remember Dante’s point and what it taught me about volunteering to take someone else’s picture.

Joshua Tree

This was the discovery that I could love something I never thought I’d like. Joshua Tree is the equivalent to almost any vegetable I rejected at the age of five. People say it’s great and the response is “o rlly?” And then all of the sudden it turns to “fuck yeah!!!”. I gotta keep that in mind more often. The desert is broccoli without the need for dessert.

I’m going to cheat and quote my very first post, as I touched in Joshua Tree quite a bit before:

“We were without service. Kath could not get a hold of her boyfriend or family to let them know where we were, and I was forced to look through what music was saved to my itunes. I had very few options, many from my friend Paul during a time when he had downloaded Grimes and Kanye’s discographies. We soon found that the only song to listen to when driving through the desert was Kanye’s “I Am A God”. Even nature laughs at Kanye’s ridiculous lyrics.

I say nature laughs at his lyrics because if any god exists, it isn’t him. It is almost like nature knows this; the wind kicks up the dust, strange trees sparsely appear like crooked silhouettes of crippled men. I know that Kath and I felt something shift. Joshua Tree was not like anything we had ever seen. Everyone talks about the energy, the “feel”, that the park contains. I know what most audiences to this statement think: what drugs are you on? But that wasn’t the case for us. Kath and I hadn’t been listening to Bono and passing an L, or acid, or peyote, or any of that bullshit. Pun intended.

Granted, I did insist these (see picture) weird furry cacti were the Joshua Trees at first. We were actually in the Cholla Cactus Garden. We made camp at Big Rocks and made a fire that took much too much effort in such a desert wasteland. The rocks that hulked behind and in front and all around us seemed to embrace us and encourage us as we made our best attempt at the worst fire.

Our hands had gone numb. This was the billionth reminder that winter exists, man. I swear I remembered science class and learning that the desert got cold at night, but somehow feeling it is just a little more real. We had finally given up after dumping a half of a corona into the fire to attempt to feed a small spark. We turned our backs away from the pit in frustration.

And in that moment, at least this is how I remember it, we heard a crackle. We turned to see a flame magically dancing at the base of the pit. How in the actual fuck? We will never know. Unless someone with actual camping experience reads this and can explain it to us.

The rest of our night was a tame walk to the “amphitheater” to hear a talk or desert tortoises. We walked the 1/8 of a mile wrapped in our car blanket and doubled up on essentially every layer we could be, save maybe an extra pair of underwear. Between shivering and straining to see what a tortoise’s penis might look like based off of the photo being displayed on the projector of two tortoises mating, we learned a ton. The only matter that is up for debate is whether or not the ranger presenting was hot or not. And to be honest, even that could not keep us from sprinting back to our site in order to get in our sleeping bags and hope that going to bed before 10 would save us from the bitter cold the late evening would bring.

SIDE NOTE: Why does every National Park seem to have an Amphitheater? I understand there are a ton of things to learn and I absolutely support the nature talks. It is just that calling a space an amphitheater 1.) Sounds very manmade/lame for a park. I understand there are natural, rock amphitheaters, but these are not common to most parks and end up being mislabeled. And 2.) Supports this idea that nature is there to entertain us. As entertaining as nature is, to think of it as there to serve us when we treat it so poorly or insist it must have a monetary worth is just bleh. Like the 90’s where a girl would mimic sticking her finger down her throat. Like seriously, BARF. Gag me. You get the idea.

WRONG. Painfully wrong. We fell asleep, at what point I’m not sure, to the chattering of our teeth and the fear that we would wake up to a sleeping bag full of loose toes. By loose, I mean broken off, prickling our feet like graham cracker crumbs. Do you get it, yet?

We both slept for maybe a solid three hours. We then laid for about two hours pretending to be asleep so the other one would not be woken to the horrifying truth that is winter. We lasted until about 5:30am, at which point we both let out gasping breaths of “take me now Lord Jesus!” and popped out of our tents, wrapped in our cocoon sleeping bags. A man around our age was tending to a breakfast fire when we emerged. We all three locked eyes (is that possible?) and hysterically started laughing. We made our way to the car to turn on the heat and defrost.

We waited in the car for the sun to rise and glanced at my car’s thermometer reading a balmy 24 degrees Fahrenheit. As soon as we saw the sun begin to rise, we drove past Skull Rock, deeper into the park and the trees. We practically jumped out of the car to marvel at (and of course take pictures of) the sunrise in the desert.

All those thoughts I had ever had that doubted my ability to live far from water, went far away. The. Desert. Is. Beautiful. Not beautiful like “look at the way the sun is shining on my new car”; more like “look at this baby I made over the past nine months.” THE definition of Mother Nature. I don’t know how else to describe it.

On top of all the eye-gasms I was having, the heat from the sun gave me that instant feeling of the first day of spring where it actually feels like spring. Where everyone has been wearing their down jackets down to the last feather, and suddenly it is time to dust off the ol’ cargo shorts. This all happens because 40 degree weather breaks through the -10’s and your thermoregulation is completely off. The blood is thinned. Suns out, cargo pockets ready to hold your cargo.”

To be continued…