Joshua Tree National Monument
Joshua Tree National Monument is a serene wilderness; a calm untroubled desert below a silent sky. It is located in the Mojave Desert south-east of Los Angeles. The desert landscape in the park averages 4,000 feet in altitude. Its arid plains are covered in green-gray scrub grasses, and dotted with the wiry Joshua trees that give the park its name.
The Joshua trees are spread sparsely- but evenly like light posts in a parking lot.
This gives perspective, and depth to the landscape as your eyes sweep out across it.
The Joshua trees have a straight round trunks, about as tall as a person, and are covered
in a thick fur like fiber. The top of each trunk splits into a few finger like
branches, which end in a star-burst pattern of sharp green leaves.
The canopy of the trees are thus uncrowded, as if to allow the sunlight to bathe each
spear of leaf from all directions.
The desert is dotted with rocky hills of yellow sandstone.
These outcrops have been weathered into smooth curves, and rounded boulders. The
rocks huddle together like soap bubbles; every external face and corner rounded off.
Individual rocks perched above the formations, or tumbled down the sides,
have shapes of flattened spheres, caps, lenses, and eggs.
Little San Bernardino Mtns. from Key View
All images © John Donohue, 1995,1996