road trip: joshua tree

postcards from a pandemic

Two weeks before the world shut down, I met friends in Joshua Tree for a weekend of camping. The drive out: five hours through the wild west. Cowboy on the sidewalk, fireworks tent outside the Shooting Range. A town called Hope. At the Wenden Country Market & Hardware, a woman buying a shovel and Jack Daniels nips. In every town, a Family Dollar store.

Snow on the mountains. A campfire beneath the stars after bouldering. In the artist colony, the Beauty Bubble Salon & Museum. Gift shops reeking of mesquite. An otherworldly escape and then—

the jarring return to earth.

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