Joshua Tree

Have you ever been in a place so still that peace sinks down into your bones? That is one of my best attempts at describing Joshua Tree National Park. One evening late in our trip, the four of us traveled about a hour from our hotel to arrive at the park before sunset. Our sons were hesitant to go. They were tired and had just spent two days at Disneyland. How could rocks, trees, desert, and sky stand up to Disneyland?

It stood up pretty darn well.

We drove into the park and found an area to pull our car into. We piled out to see trails working their way towards these piles of rocks through brush and these trees-that-weren’t-really-trees with their branches bending in all sorts of Seussical directions. The boys and I scrambled up the rocks until we couldn’t go any higher. We rejoined EA on the ground and took in a land unlike any we’d seen. We took pictures. Then we found another way up the rocks and made our way to the top.

All the while, the setting sun painted the sky in shades of glowing orange, gold, and salmon pink on a canvas of steel blue. And we would just watch. For awhile, we sat on rocks high above the ground. Then we returned to the desert floor and we gazed at the rocks, trees, desert, and sky. My heart rate slows just thinking about that view.

We clambered back in the car and drove through the park as dusk gave way to the stars. After driving for a hour or so, we pulled off the side of the road. We stared at the pinpricks of light that were the only illumination for miles and miles. On the side of that desert road, the four of us shared in our daily trip ritual of High, Low, Buffalo where we shared the good, the not-so-good, and the random of the past day. No surprise that our time in the park was everyone’s high.

Before we left that bone-deep peace for the quiet hum of the car, I remembered Psalm 8, particularly the third and fourth verses: “When I look at Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars that You have established; what are humans that You are mindful of them, mortals that You care for them?” As small as we were in that park, as plain as we might have seemed amongst a stunning sunset in the wild, I felt cared for.

Not that God painted that sky and landscape for me, but that I got to experience it with the three people I love most. I hope our boys always remember Joshua Tree and that they will find more places and people in their lives that fill them with such peach and such gratitude. Because if I slow down for a minute and quiet everything down in my head, I can experience that peace in the city sky I see from the back steps of our house or in the sounds of one of my boys laughing or the feeling of my wife’s hand in mine. For all that and much more, I am unbelievably grateful.