Blogifornia #3: The Joshua Tree

Today rather than driving all over the valley and blowing money on stuff, we headed out to Joshua Tree National Park. It was awe inspiring and humbling. When you're in a big city it's easy to become a number, but when you're standing next to a palm tree that is probably hundred of years old and many times your age, you get a big sense of wonder about the world.
Let's just say I had a lot of life to think about today.
For the six hours of the entire trip I got psychotically shutter happy, and consequently came back home with over 160 pictures of the gorgeous, to die for desert landscape. Before this trip I had never seen the desert, let alone walked through one. It's exactly like you see in the movies. [Minus tumbleweeds. I saw no tumbleweeds...Sad!:(] I even spotted some signs of life including something that looked like but was not a chipmunk, a crow, and a desert fox. Possibly a coyote, but this thing looked downright foxy to me.

What really hit me was the fragile nature of the environment. The park is named after a Joshua Tree, which is a spiny tree that looks like this:
A Joshua tree will grow approximately one inch a year. In order for it to grow branches, it has to experience a decent frost, that sparks the survival instinct in the tree that literally makes it grow. On top of that, they have to be pollinated by a specific moth. The chances seemed to be totally stacked against this prickly thing, and yet THERE WERE HUNDREDS OF THEM. Many of them were well over 8 feet tall making them hundreds of years old.

It makes me think about the random chances and risks that are so common in life. What are the chances of things happening, vs. what are the chances of things NOT happening. Nature is tough, and it's going to outlast us all, bar nuclear war or human mutation.
I'm so over my head in the wave of all that California has to offer, from perpetual summer jogging weather to mountains and back again.

Sunglasses at Target: 13$. Epic accidental photo: Priceless.