We drove in the afternoon and the road was straight. She looked out the window and took pictures with her smart pad, which she used as an oversized camera.
We were always at our best on some new adventure.
We started to see those first sentries of a camped army. First one, then two and three. The Joshuas seemed a strange marriage of pine and oak, or human figures with large waving arms, fickle things who thrive only at the right altitude and temperature.
We kept driving and the trees thickened. Then we began to climb. On a faraway hill, we saw a line of them, Joshuas marching toward the top, one behind the other, only to find that it was an illusion, just another scattering of trees.
An immense valley opened before us. The Joshuas started to thin out, until one last straggler remained, as though afraid to venture further.
We headed back, knowing we had missed what we had come for, the threshold to a walk among them. Our eyes scouted for an invitation. We saw a shoulder of dirt, a path winding off, just there.
The sign read We Thump, its painted letters curled and shriveled after years without shade. The name means “ancient ones “ in Paiute. We stopped the car, killed the engine, and then we couldn’t hear anything. We followed a trail that was timid, that left us stranded, only to call out, “Over here!”
We saw human tracks but mostly paw prints. And scat. And sinewy lines in the sand made by snakes.
She spotted a lizard and called out, followed it with her finger, the day’s first discovery.
The sun was hot and we ate an orange. It was sweet and tasted better than water and the bugs arrived one by one and buzzed our lips and eyes. The desert was ruthless. Dead Joshuas bent like old men expiring their last breath, and it felt like a graveyard.
We followed an old stream bed, the sand making it hard to walk. The biggest Joshuas clutched in groups in the distance so we scrambled up a rocky bank, brushing through thickets that scratched our legs.
She walked ahead and I took her picture, a silhouette, among those mythical things. She wore a red hat to block the sun, and she looked as pretty as I’d ever seen her.
