A hot day today (shocker), so we planned a leisurely drive through Joshua Tree NP and maybe a couple little hikes, but nothing too strenuous in this 100-plus-degree heat.
Our Australian friends, Jessica and House, were up early, and they had their little rental car packed and were on the road by 7 a.m. I looked after them wistfully and envied their fancy-free ways. Then I eyed our trailer, and at all the stuff that our van and Teardrop had vomited onto the porch — two coolers, an axe, a sack of marshmallow roasters, a box of games, 5 water bottles, about 30 pairs of shoes and four North Face rolling duffles — and dreaded having to put all of that away again..
After a quick breakfast, we headed to the visitor center in the town of Joshua Tree, where hippie ranger Dave regaled us with the lore of the national park. Not legends about how Native Americans first used the land, or about how coyotes outsmart their prey. We’re in California, after all, so they have to be fables about over-the-top celebrity. Like how a newly formed band of unknown musicians came to Joshua Tree to hang out; the group didn’t have a name until a convocation of eagles soared right over their heads. Guess what they ended up calling themselves.
Then there’s the story about how Gram Parsons, who loved Joshua Tree park so much, ODed and died at a motel up the road. His body was prepared to be shipped from Los Angeles to family in Louisiana, but friends stole the body from the airport in a borrowed hearse, brought it back to Joshua Tree and, per Parsons’s wishes, cremated the body — or, cremated most of the body before park rangers caught up with them.
And how Robert Plant got in a big fight with his girlfriend in the nearby town of Twentynine Palms, while he was on tour in California. She left him at the club, packed up her stuff and went home to Canada, inspiring him to write the song “29 Palms.”
Anyhooo … after chatting it up with Ranger Dave, we embarked on a 35-mile loop around a corner of this 800,000-acre park, stopping, of course, for the requisite re-creation of U2’s “Joshua Tree” album cover, taking a quick 1.5-mile hike to Barker Dam, and stopping to climb, slide and scramble over giant boulders at Skull Rock.
The landscape is a Dr. Seussical wonderland. Forests of shaggy Joshua trees standing like a menagerie of posable figurines, with branches reaching every which way. Gumby and Pokey with limbs gone haywire.
Towering over the trees are massive rock formations that look like tottering piles of giant boulders on the verge of coming to life, like the rock monster from Galaxy Quest:
In the late afternoon, we ventured to the Noah Purifoy Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Art, which is just a couple of miles from the Hicksville Trailer Palace where we’re staying. Purifoy, an African American visual artist and sculptor who was born in Alabama in 1917, lived and worked in Los Angeles and Joshua Tree for most of his life. He was one of the founding members of the Watts Towers Art Center in Los Angeles and is perhaps best known for creating assemblage sculpture, as well as for spurring social change through his art. He dedicated the last 15 years of his life to building large-scale assemblage sculpture here in the Mojave Desert.
The space — a 10-acre parcel of dusty land — includes more than 100 found-object installations. It’s fascinating and disturbing and inspiring at the same time. The sculptures are made from almost anything you could find at junkyard or salvage store — car parts, patio furniture, vacuum cleaners, toilets, TV sets, radios, beer kegs, aluminum siding, water heaters, even upholstered furniture left to deteriorate in the elements. Some fit a classic definition of sculpture; they begin and end, and have distinct form. But others seem more like piles of junk in such advanced stages of decay that it looks like they are ready to be swallowed by the desert floor. It’s hard to know if this is what the artist intended, or if the sculptures once took another form, but have since succumbed to time, weather and vandalism.
I was hoping that Natalie, especially, would be really inspired by our visit. As we drove away, she declared the museum to be “creepy but interesting.” A rousing endorsement from a 15-year-old.
From the museum, we drove west through Yucca Valley to Pioneertown, an unincorporated community about 30 minutes from Joshua Tree. The town, if you can call it that, was built in the 1940s as a movie set for Wild West films and tv shows, including “The Cisco Kid.” These days, there are actual little stores tucked into the buildings — a pottery shop and a tannery studio. But for the most part, the area seems sleepy and neglected.
By far, the liveliest place on the the block is Pappy & Harriet’s Pioneertown Palace. The building was originally used as the cantina set in the Wild West movies. Then, in the 1950s, it was an outlaw biker burrito bar. Today, it’s a legendary honky tonk known for its mesquite barbecue and live music, named one of the Top Ten Hidden Gems in the Country in Billboard Magazine’s 2012 Best Clubs issue. Lucinda Williams, Neko Case, Rufus Wainwright, Vampire Weekend, Billy Corgan, Daniel Lanois and many more have graced the stage.
We were given a stageside table, and enjoyed steak and ribs before the musical act — Daniel Lawrence Walker out of Nashville — took the stage with his band.
The place has a total Los Angeles hipster vibe (as does all of Joshua Tree). As Natalie noted, the band members were all wearing shirts two sizes too small and belts that didn’t hold their pants up. It’s been fun to experience this scene, but it’s also a little exhausting to be around people who care obsessively about looking like they don’t care. I’ll be ready to move on tomorrow, from the facades of Pioneertown to somewhere slightly more authentic.
No comments:
Post a Comment