When winter comes around, birds fly south to warm places.

It soon evolved into quite a chore to nail down a rental vehicle that was big enough to take two families of six people.  Mini-vans were ideal but they were all rented out long before we had even started our process.  It took some serious expert search by our web-savvy friend to get us a full-size sedan with the price still under control.

Maybe we are spoiled; or, maybe we are looking for things new in our life all along and all the time.  Still it was slightly silly for us to escape town because when Christmas turned white and severe throughout the US, our home base, the San Francisco Bay Area, stayed pretty mild and pleasant, with bright sunshine.  As a matter of a fact, many people flocked to our area for winter escape.  Good to know that we are still restless; to live is to go. Christmas morning we got the car from the rental shop and loaded it up.  Interstate 5 between the Bay Area and Southern California is really a stretch of boring asphalt; however, it's rather wide and decorous for fast traveling.  A few drops of rain in the previous months had blessed us with soft green rolling hills that are boundlessly soothing to the eye and the soul.  The morning air touched us with a tender and sweet finger.  Everyone was in fabulous spirit. That, of course, was before we came to realize that driving would basically killed the day, a gorgeous day.  It didn't take much for the Southern California's naked harshness to erase the memory of the delicate green of the North.  The LA smog invaded everyone's psyche like a vicious and yet unrecognizable fiend.  It was that time of the year when the day brought darkness upon itself and the rest of us in a ruthless hurry.  By the time we abandoned Interstate 5 and got on Interstate 10 toward the east, kids started to whine, complain and even burst out crying.  Everyone in the car became stiffened, tired and irritated.  Giggles took a fast wane.  So it was really dainty that Palm Springs quickly came into sight.  At 5 o'clock it was completely dark. We found our hotel all right even without the aid of a decent map. Hunger overcame us so we had to eat.  When the tanks were full, guess what? it was still 60 degrees outside.  That was unbelievable this late in December.  But that was why we drove all day to be here.  Excited by the pool and the hot tubs alongside, we hurried into our swimming clothes.  How delicious, indeed, it was to soak in the pool and better yet in the Jacuzzi when the air outside was cooler.  That was the best way to recover from the fatigue of sitting in the car all day long. Stars were blinking above and the moon was crescent and shy and dodging. The winter breeze in the High Desert felt like warm sunshine, extra gentle and amorous.

Bright and warm sunlight rocked the cradle and I was jolted awake, though our window drapery was drawn down. Screaming sunlight rushed through the little gap between the wall and the curtains.  The desert has really bright sunshine and extra blue sky. There must be extra infrared waves in the desert sun light.  It burns, it warms, and it pounds the eyelids.  After a quick breakfast, we drove back onto Interstate 10 towards the west for a couple of minutes to find Route 62 or Twentynine Palms Highway.  That's where we turned up north toward the Joshua Tree National Monuments, one of our two destinations for this particular winter expedition.

The morning light revealed a landscape of extreme dryness.  Every rock has been scorched again and again continuously through time eternity. Every inch of the land continues to be burned into ashy gray in an endless, spectacular bombardment.  As becoming as the palm trees and lush lawns of the towns nearby such as Palm Springs, the soul can affirm with absoluteness that only this deep wounded scorch is permanent in this corner of the universe.  In the high desert, the mind ceases to be; only the soul drifts left and right, high and low, in high gear. There is a profound connection between the senses and the landscape.  No eyes can turn away from this gigantic wound without a blade sharp registration.  The sadness is too overwhelming, too gigantic and too real.  Our will to paint everything over with rosy color is diminished in the face of such vastness, for the sheer impossibility blows one's mind; it's mighty hard for human flesh, that delicate piece of life, to last here, let alone sprouting any wishes.

The desert scene is a different kind of beauty, a beauty that is wide open and bleary-eyed.  A beauty that invites not admiration but helplessness; a beauty that is inclusive yet repulsive to those who get no guts nor genuineness inside the soul. A sudden silence ballooned inside me that had been eroding away during the years.  A giant river is coming back, with a roar. Sadness can bring a feeling that's infinitely more profound than happiness.

I could feel my breath thickening and dragging.  Again I could hear an ancient and yet not so distant past sobbing. Sobbing signals coming back to life. Sometimes in rear view mirror, even the saddest sobbing can be delirious because of the weight it carries.

The Little San Bernardino Mountains serve as a watershed for this otherwise monotonous grayness of great expansion.  Strangely enough, over the hill, in the presumably hell-side of this inferno, in Morongo Valley, in Palm Wells, in the vast Yucca Valley, there are people who live here, every Carl's Jr. draws a crowd.  How could people live here?  What sustains them?  Why do people buy multi-million dollar properties in the middle of the desert?  Has our world gone crazy?

One thing is amply manifested here.  Water reigns supreme in every mind, beauty or beast, as every town aspires to name itself with palm, spring, or oasis.  When there is water, life can and will hang on.  Maybe this explains all human suffering and endurance.  Water brings us into form and we have no choice but to maintain the form.  No wonder I kept hearing that tune, that damn tune which forever haunts me, "there used to be many many trees here; but, now there are only ferocious winds and sandstorm."

Joshua Tree is a remarkable form of life.  It is a Yucca palm that doesn't appears to be flourishing and yet has been gracing the land of death here for ages.  The desert may be twitching in smoke and evaporation; but those Joshua Trees, those stubborn spots of green, fearless green, refuse to fade away.  They stand there as if laughing in the face of death and distinction ...

It is said that past tectonic movement of our old earth brought huge tear drops of melted minerals or mantle to earth's surface.  Water, tears of the purest kind, flooded the area and contributed to the fragments and this final formation and fabulous presentation of those gigantic outburst.  What sadness, really, gave birth to such an expression?  Who but those with the same past could appreciate this great sadness and its profound beauty?

Anyone of the huge rock piles can rival the Egyptian pyramids.  Let's not forget that here the rock formations are naturally piled up.  Yeah, many kings could have easily settled their burial wishes here with glory and less torture on those hapless slaves.

Joshua Tree and rock piles are the two basic features of this vast piece of land.  Of course, they had jackrabbits, lizards, coyotes, bighorns, quails, scrub jays and other little creatures hiding in the bushes and behind rocks.  The sky is wide and the land is open.  Then up north, passing a certain border, there was nothing, nothing but a few pathetic bushes which appear invisible all the time as they take on the color of the desert or the mighty heat has forced a horrific facelessness on everyone and everything.  As they were beaten by fierce beams of the hot scorching desert sun to resemble not plants but dirt and death. Death is not sleep because sleep is too comfortable ...

Still a lonely heart was trembling with appreciation of the most profound type.  That heart is once again elated by this grand return to its homeland, to the endless meagerness that once was the music of his coming into being.  Give him Joshua Tree, give him rocks and meager soil, give him wilderness and let him once again embrace the uphill battle to survive, a thrill ride that many can't stand ... there should never be any need for the skyscrapers and their cancerous pretentiousness and ugliness ... there should be Indians, instead of a hordes of invaders who stubbornly downed their shorts in deep winter ...  there should be teaching to all the children that the most spectacular suffering is endured in silence ...

There in the middle of the desert I remember some of the lines of a friend who once celebrated the seven year drought in California in the 1980s.  He was anticipating the re-desertation of California, a grand return to the origin.  Would that be something to wake up all of us cowards? For some of us, coming to Joshua Tree National Monuments is to get in touch with some of the feelings deep or perhaps even forgotten. It was not a good day; instead, it was a grand day.

Again, we came back to the hotel in darkness and had another encore of swimming and soaking in the hot tub.  The Milky Way was right over our head ... so many things that were once familiar came back in the middle of the desert.  I believe that the stars have seen them all.  So there was really no reason to utter a word.

The next day we tried to get up as early as possible to rush to San Diego so the kids can see the Sea World.  To avoid driving over the San Jacinto or Black Mountains which circled our Southwest escape route, we took the Interstate 10 toward the southeast then to 111 and 86.  After a day in the dry desert and huge bare rocks, we would love to see some water for a change.  Salton Sea was a natural curiosity.  The pocket of huge water came into being by accident when canals connecting to the Colorado River bursted its enforcement in 1904.  The vast body of water has become a pleasant port for many migrating birds, especially during harsh winters.  But it's a sad story as the once fresh water has become saltier than the ocean, due to intense evaporation and desert runoffs and agricultural discharges.  Now the surface of the lake is some 228 feet below sea level.  The summer days' scorching sun and the high concentration of salt have robbed fishes the necessary oxygen so that they die in schools of millions per day.  As a matter of fact, we stepped on a shoreline which looked like white sand beach from afar but in actuality fish bones a few feet deep.  It was hair raising to a certain extent.  Nearby some fishes were dead but not yet dry and a few struggled to breathe and keep themselves in the water.  It was a startling sight, especially for the kids.  Sometimes there is no choice and there is no escape.

When we reached Interstate 8, we instantly knew that what we termed as summer does not end in this part of the world.  And the landscape of rock piles and desert scene similar to the Joshua Tree National Park kept on stretching toward Mexico.

We got to the Sea World around 2 p.m. and managed to see almost everything in 5 hours.  I am sure that everyone had a good time and the kids had a blast.  But the Sea World is nothing but a toy land in comparison to what we have seen yesterday.  Even the killer whales appeared small and dolphins comic.  San Diego has nice weather, that's about it.  Los Angeles has terrible traffic and we don't want even to mention that.

It was a great trip.  Before leaving San Diego, we sneaked to the beaches and admired the huge waves of the Pacific.  Maybe only the Pacific can match the profundity of the rocks and desert and death and deep sadness.  It was the fourth day and we got home before 7 p.m. That was a profound trip.

January, 2001