THE OASIS OF MARA
You might recognize these trees and know this place for what they’re called: Joshua Tree. It’s my favorite place in California—a place of magical desert light and stillness. I wondered about the name of the trees, which led me down a rabbit hole of research; I was very sure that the indigenous people that first inhabited this area could not have been the ones to name these trees, “Joshua.” According to the National Park Service, 19th century Mormon settlers named the tree for how it looked like “after the biblical figure, Joshua, seeing the limbs of the tree as outstretched in supplication, guiding the travelers westward,” but there’s no real literature to support that. No matter. The Cahuilla peoples call these trees “hunuvat chiy’a” or “humwichawa.” And much longer after the Mormon, scientists name this tree Yucca brevifolia, and discovered that it is part of the Agave family.
Similarly, this special place had a name long before the followers of Josh came along, a name I think feels so right: the Oasis of Mara. From what I can gather online, the oasis is in the area of park that now is its headquarters. It was first settled by the Serrano, who called it Mara, meaning “"the place of little springs and much grass." Though not all of the park is technically an oasis, it certainly feels energetically so. It’s only a three hour drive from Los Angeles, but it might as well be another planet—& it certainly looks like one.
Joshua Tree National Park has become popular among fashion and design enthusiasts, like a special subcategory of Bohemian Chic, embodying multiple references: desert, retro, rock and roll, adventurer, hipster, hiker, spiritual retreat, and even wedding destination. Who knew that a spiky plant could inspire so much love, because it’s for sure not the type of tree you can hug. But every tree is such a individual character, more so than with other trees. They’re like cartoon characters to me, or stick figures drawn by kids come to life as trees—all crooked and one arm longer than the other. Spiky & whimsical & weird & ancient.
Spring & autumn are my favorite times to visit Joshua Tree. It starts to warm up in May and cools down again in September. I don’t travel solo with my kids often, but when my husband had to be on a shoot that overlapped with our planned trip, I took the kids myself for an overnight. We spent the day hiking and bouldering. The rock formations looked otherworldly, my kids just tiny beings scrabbling among them. That this landscape looks ancient is because the youngest of them is tens of millions of years old, and “the oldest rocks in Joshua Tree National Park are 1.4 to 1.7 billion-year old metamorphic rocks” according to the US Geological Survey. If you want to geek out on the specific four types of igneous rock found in Joshua Tree, read more here. Yes, Joshua Tree is the kind of natural wonder that makes a person like me, who didn’t fancy myself a science nerd, ask, “What kind of rock is that?”
The first time I went was in my ‘20’s with my friend Autumn. It was a spontaneous trip, and when I look back, we were not really prepared at all. We took her mom’s Volvo, and had no plans for accommodations. It must have been early or late summer, because it was hot as hell, but not quite hot enough to kill us. Autumn parked the car in the shade of some tall rocks somewhere, & we opened all the doors & threw one of those woven cotton blankets with all the holes in it over the top of the car and the doors for shade. And we were so hot we fell asleep, for how long, we had no idea. When the sun started setting, we woke up & explored around on foot. It’s etched into my mind as one of those memories—when you can feel the heat & arid air, & the stillness, & the sense of last minute adventure. We had no goal, no one to visit—we were just there. That sense of freedom & presence is what Joshua Tree will always be to me.
