An early autumn sunset sets the sky aflame in Joshua Tree National Park in southeastern California. When you take a closer look, you see beyond the reds and see the blue sky beyond the clouds, and below, the subtle shades of the plants and hills. The desert, it seems, always rewards a second look. Rainfall is rare here, and this faint rainbow seemed a visitor from another world...
Sunsets present themselves in endless variety and subtlety, giving a depth to an ordinary intersection on Twentynine Palms Highway.
About 72.5 miles from the southern entrance to Joshua Tree National Park, you will find the Galleta Meadows Estate in Borrego Springs, featuring about 130 impressively-scaled metal sculptures. The unfenced, privately-owned site is open the public every day of the year, for hiking, horseback riding, and of course photography...
The sculptures were all created by Ricardo Breceda and commissioned by landowner Dennis Avery, with the goal of land conservation and sponsoring a public art display. There are diverse themes, including native animals like bighorn sheep and these life-size, wild horses above, and this giant scorpion facing desert insects. Other themes focus on prehistoric animals including dinosaurs...
The sculptor also created mythical beasts as well...
Seen at enough distance, you can take in the full length of the 350 feet of Breceda's sand dragon sculpture.
The sculptures, included the tortoises below, were all created from 2008 to 2012, when Dennis Avery died. Because of his land conservation effort, the Galleta Meadows Estate protects actual wild creatures and plants, as well as the metal kind, and because the land will be protected from development.
The photographer exercised extra caution because serpents (the real, not sculptural kind) are common in the desert. Despite precautions, she was surprised to be at face-level after turning around, with a rattlesnake coiled up in rocky crevice, just inches behind her. Because she is dedicated to her craft, she got the shot, and avoided any bites...
This art car was a late 90s Buick (we think) under that eye-catching psychedelic paintwork, photographed at Rainbowland in Joshua Tree, a 3-acre art park with gallery and work studio. The park, facilities, and works were created by artist Patrick Hasson. Somehow, California car culture has collided here with what was once called the counterculture...
A somehow-related roadside attraction invites passers-by to share their joys. By an eerie coincidence, "my dogs" is listed over "Picasso", which stunned our photographer because she had a legendary, much-loved hound named after Pablo Picasso. The cosmic, psychedelic alignments keep coming, in true California style.
Just 45.5 miles west on I-10 from Joshua Tree National Park, you'll find the desert town of Palm Springs. Though it gained fame as a center of mid-century modern architecture in the 50s and 60s, architect Lloyd Wright (son of Frank) got the ball rolling with his 1924 design of the Oasis Hotel, with innovative concrete block construction. Other postwar architects adopted perforated concrete blocks and shady metal vaulted trellises, as here, in the Old Las Palmas neighborhood...
In the same neighborhood, this mid-century bungalow forms a style suited to the then-new car culture, and the postwar innovation of air conditioning. When I once asked a Palm Springs friend if she planned to take her dog for a nice, post-sunset walk, she replied, "Are are crazy? It's still a hundred outside?"
Even a spaceship gas station qualifies for landmark status, because of its reinforced concrete structural expressionism and futurist adventurism. Ironies abound; the futurism dates from 1964, when architect William Cody created this design. Back to the future...
But we will want return you to the desert before closing, back out in the primordial wilds.
At Joshua Tree, this coyote pup levels his gaze at the photographer before moving on...
Because the desert rewards a second look, you realize that it is teeming with life in amazing diversity. Folks who avoid the desert (after all, it can be hot and dry, and can make demands of us), often assume it's a vast, empty place. After you spend some sustained time out in wild nature, perhaps you may experience a shift of perspective. Perhaps the truly empty spaces are ill-considered artifacts of our civilization: the vast asphalt parking lots with oppressive sodium-vapor lighting, the AI data centers, and the first postwar suburban tract developments that leveled hills and cut down trees to maximize profits. We hope you take that second look, and treat the landscape and its creatures with respect. You may come home with new gifts...
Photo Credits:
All photos were generously provided by Veronika Sprinkel, a frequent contributor in past days of this blog, except the coyote pup shots from Duncan Mackenzie. Our wildlife photographer friends concluded their desert adventures happily, without any injuries, despite that one close call with that rattler...
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