I Am Freaking The F**K Out.
This is going to be a long one, so if you want to make a cup of coffee, or a sandwich before reading further, I wouldn’t blame you. In fact I’ve had several cups of coffee whilst writing this.
If there were a main theme song for this trip, it would be Weatherman by Eddie Benjamin. If you haven’t heard it yet, scan the Spotify code and enjoy yourself, it’s a true BOP. The lyric that stuck in my head was, “All the rain from last year’s pain is gone.” It was this trip where I felt like I’ve finished healing from everything that I went through in 2021.
Working from home has a whole heap of benefits, from starting the day at your own pace, to working from bed and going for mid day runs. Having a flexible work location is without a doubt, the best benefit I have had. Is it better than health insurance, and a 401K, or even paid time off? I’m 24, how the hell am I supposed to know. All I know is I get to work wherever I want, when I want. I spent a week working in Joshua Tree National Park. It was a refreshing week away from the burbs of Utah, and I experienced delightful things such as artillery fire, cotton candy sunsets, a scavenger hunt in the dark, a mental breakdown… or two, and as always, good food, good people, and lots of laughs.
Let’s focus on the whole, artillery fire, and scavenger hunt in the dark thing for a minute, I promise an illustration is in here somewhere. Some of you may know (I did not) that you can bring guns – what seems like any gun – to Joshua Tree BLM land and shoot shit at the mountains. I spent my first day hanging out of the back of my MINI in business meetings when all of a sudden, cracks and bangs echoed in the distance. Mildly freaked out and riding high blood pressure from my morning cup of coffee, I do a quick google search and find out people shooting at the mountain in J-Tree is a very, very common occurrence. Not my cup of tea, but it’s better than shooting people I suppose. My peaceful week in the desert would now include random heart spikes from .50 caliber rifles going off in the distance. I made it out alive, so you could say I managed.
Working in the desert – despite being on the computer and not manual labor like laying track or paving roads – works up quite the appetite. A friend and I headed into town, 29 Palms, in the late afternoon to grab chicken sausages, a Caesar salad kit, and of course beer, though I believe this time it was actually hard seltzer which was equally delightful. Without a care in the world, we walked out of the grocery store as the sun was falling behind the distant mountains and began our short drive back to the car. The sun falls fast in the desert. it was the moment we turned onto the dirt road without any source of light, we asked each other, “how do we get back to the car?” Feeling confident in ourselves, we decided to wing it. We had driven this pothole stricken, sage brush covered, soft sand laden “road” in the daylight once or twice before, we could surely make our way back in the dark. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the pleasure of losing your glasses or a contact lens in the dark and scrounged the floor gently patting around to attempt to softly come across your only means of seeing, but this is what I would liken that experience to. There were a lot of “hey I see the sparkle of a tail light, go over there!” and “Ope that’s not us” or “This flat part looks familiar” and “I’ve definitely seen that bush before, we must be close.” We had not in fact seen that bush before, and we were not close. We tried to open our maps and put in the coordinates of what now seems like an imaginary campground and that lead us to, you guessed it, the wrong spot. We drove around for another little while, now contemplating sleeping in the back of the MINI and eating raw chicken sausages and our Caesar salad in the driver and passenger seat, cold, in the dark. We both had taken pictures earlier in the day and with the magic of technology, discovered almost the exact coordinates of where we were parked thanks to our phones geotagging the location of the pictures. We dropped those coordinates in Maps and we finally found our little setup. The relief was overwhelming. This scavenger hunt also made me realize just how important it is to have the right people around you in dire situations. For the entire 2 hour drive, in circles, in the pitch black desert, lost, there was no screaming, no shouting, no crying, no anger, no frustration, no fluster, no hullaballoo and no irritation. There was critical thinking, gently reciting lyrics to the quiet music playing in the background, jokes about going in circles and flashing the same van with my brights ever 15 minutes, and giggles from romping through soft sand and over dirt hills. This paragraph serves as a lesson to always mark your location when camping on BLM land. If I ever had to go through that same situation again, I would do it in a heart beat and I know exactly who I’d do it with. The chicken sausages and Caesar salad were delightful by the way.
Thursday night a couple friends from the Valley Of Fire trip showed up, and the four of us decided to attempt a sunset hike to the top of the closest mountain. Luckily the gun fodder had ceased for the day and we were able to ascend the mountain side sans bullet wounds. From our cars, it looked like it was going to be a long hike, and as we all know, the sun sets fast in the desert, so we HOOFED it up the mountain and made it to the top just before the sun fell behind distant mountains. A couple of videos, selfies, and a sunset cheers later and we made our way back down the mountain. Like mountain goats hopping and careening their way through jagged crevasses and and down watershed gulleys, the four of us descended the mountain. As you can see from the picture above, we made it safely back to our cars before the last light of the day. We made it back in time for a fourth friend to arrive to our little desert commune. Thursday night was an incredibly peaceful and joyous reunion with some good friends before the excitement of a heap of new people would show up the following day. The desert was awfully cold that night and the few of us who slept in our cars turned our engines on to gain warmth and attempted to insulate ourselves in cocoons of t-shirts, sweaters, hoodies, sheets, blankets, throws, and comforters. All to no avail… maybe it’s time to invest in a cold weather sleeping bag, but that’s not very aesthetic.
As Friday rolled around, the five of us piled into the MINI and made our way to a local coffee shop to use the bathrooms and fuel up for the day. I don’t know if it was the desert that took my energy, or the eminent arrival of 40 new people, but my vibes were a little off that morning. We all enjoyed our hot and iced beverages around a small steel mesh table and came up with a game plan for the day.
1) Hit the grocery store – I had an urge to cook chili for whoever wanted it that first official night of Outsiders Together Take Joshua Tree.
2) Setup the campsite and hang the official banner, like a flag in the wind, staking our claim to this deserted, dried up lake bed.
3) Welcome everyone to what would be most peoples first Outsiders Together event.
As we pulled into the camp after the grocery store, there was already a couple new people waiting for us. One, rides a motorcycle around the country and camps on BLM land in a tent. The other, a full time van lifer with an adorable pit bull named Chance. We unpacked the car and got to work on number 2 (not the bathroom kind)! It was right around this time where I had my first panic attack of the trip. My panic attacks aren’t like the average person’s, I stay relatively calm, but all emotions leave my body and my brain shuts down. I can’t even process where I’m at, let alone work on meeting new people. I asked myself, “Wes, you did so well at meeting new people at the last trip, what is different this time?” And it took a little bit of thinking, but I came to the conclusion that for the last trip, I was in total control of when I would arrive and when I was ready to experience people. This time, I was one of the first ones here, I wasn’t in the best situation for an introvert to meter how they experience a new group of people. So, I decided to take some time for myself and I sat in my car for about two hours reading a book my friend had lent me earlier in the trip. It was funny, relatable, and helped me come back to myself and gave me the ability to step back out of my comfort zone and get to the true purpose of this trip, which was meeting like minded people in a safe space. I stepped out of my car, cracked open a hipster IPA and welcomed a few people as they pulled in. Surprisingly (not really), I was famished and decided it would be a good time to start cooking chili. I set up my dutch oven tripod and lit a fire of hardwood and charcoals underneath it. As my dutchie preheated, I prepped the vegetables. Onions, garlic, tomatoes, green and orange bell peppers, and jalapeño make for a great chili base. I popped the lid and tossed in some oil and all of my vegetables. After they sweat for a few minutes, I added the beef, pork, stock, chili spices, and of course a cold brewski for good luck. Reduce that down and you have a basic campfire chili. Some who are reading this may be appalled that there are no beans in this chili for which I will happily argue that real chili doesn’t have beans. But that’s purely an opinion and neither here nor there.
After the chili was devoured, the evening quickly rolled around and before I could say, “is that gasoline?” a bonfire erupted from an absurdly large “portable” fire pit. It was a fitting way to light plywood ablaze, especially with the imaginary war zone off in the distance. Someone had casually mentioned that they were a fire spinner and displayed his kevlar wrapped rods earlier in the day. I’m a skeptical person so I figured I would believe it when I saw it… sure enough, this man spun fire to Katie Perry’s “Firework” and for a half tipsy Wes, this was incredible. Feeling quite confident, even now writing this, I think i could do a little fire spinning myself. A fire extinguisher would absolutely have to be near, but I would strap myself into a leather nipple harness and fling some fire, for sure. Everyone else was skeptical of me which is appropriate. One day I’ll do it, I can already spin a mad broom, that’s pretty close, right? I didn’t spin fire, but I did eat fire. Well, I ate marshmallows that were on fire. Maybe another hot take, but I think marshmallows are better lit ablaze and eaten burnt. Call me a psychopath, but I’m a happy psychopath. The evening wound down with people slowly walking away from the now, three burning fire pits and going to bed. Saturday was going to be a big day, for some of us anyway.
Sleeping in the desert is like jumping into a hot tub after making a snow angel. All night it is incredibly freezing, and then around 5:30/6:00 in the morning you finally find comfort and warmth. Then the sun really comes up and your car turns into a greenhouse as you start to bake from the inside out. I’m all for being a snack, but I do not enjoy going through the experience of becoming a golden brown pastry inside my car. Despite not being ready to experience people – this time because I hadn’t had coffee yet – I dragged myself out of my car and hung around a small fire pit with a few other early risers. As I stared off into the fire, with quite literally nothing going on behind my eyes, I receive a text from a friend asking for some help. They got up for sunrise with a couple people and went for a coffee run. Sounds like a solid morning, but this small group wanted to immediately go into the national park and my friend wasn’t quite ready for that, so I happily offered a ride. I saw this as a great opportunity to get myself some coffee so I can actually function throughout the day. I do a quick walk around my car to make sure the area was clear, I hop in, roll down the windows because, compared to Utah, it was quite toasty outside, and pulled out. Now, I like to consider myself a rather mature person for my age, but when someone by the fire pit egged me on and told me to do a donut, something overcame me and 7 year old Wes came out, it was like living a childhood dream. I turn off Dynamic Stability Control, turned on Sport Mode, I put my foot to the floor and did a hard turn to the left. My tail end whipped around me, wheels spinning, and barreled out of the campsite like a bat out of hell. It felt so good. I then immediately felt so terrible because people were still sleeping and I also kicked up a massive dust cloud. Sorry y’all. Off I went to rescue my friend, and I will add that the road to the Joshua Tree park entrance is an absolute delight to drive on. Winding desert roads with a beautiful view, a reasonable speed limit and, at the time, little to no traffic.
One desert donut, a spirited drive, and a cup of coffee later, it was time to take on Joshua Tree. This round was different, rather than doing a large group hike with everyone, we all agreed to split off and do our own thing for the day and we’d regroup afterwards. I got ready, sunscreen applied, camel back fully loaded and mounted, and hipster five panel hat donned. Off we drove, into the park. The little group I was part of, which started out as three and quickly turned to eight, was going to do something called, “The Chasm of Doom” AKA “THE BIRTHING CANAL”. The chasm of doom is a little unsettling, but you call a hike the birthing canal and I’ll be there faster than you can say “PUSH!” Wording is everything. We jumped into a couple cars and made our way into the park.
Our leader for this treacherous hike was very confident in where the trail head was. I will add that the birthing canal was a “secret”, undocumented hike, no trail head, no signs, no maps. We started off on an actual trail head and walked for about 15 minutes before coming across a small tunnel in the rocks. It looked like a birth canal to me, sure felt like traveling through one too, except rather than hours and hours of labor, we were through that baby in seconds. I thought we were done. We were born again Outsiders and I felt accomplished. “That wasn’t even it” exclaimed our tour guide. “Oh, yeah, totally!” I said with the utmost confidence. We scrambled over and under massive boulders looking for an entry way to what should be an exit. There were a lot of situations where we would say things like, “This looks pretty doom like over here.” and “That can’t be it, it doesn’t scream chasm of doom.” I am just now realizing that I am not the best person to be wandering deserts with. I have no idea what I’m doing or where I’m going. As the street youths would say, I was “vibin.” After rock scrambling for 45 minutes we decided to regroup and look on the internet for some directions on how to get to the real trail head. To my surprise, there was no internet in the middle of the boulder and funky tree ridden landscape. Back to the cars we went so that we could drive 15 minutes to some sweet, sweet 4G LTE. The second we hit data, we pulled to the side of the road and all of us looked up directions like it was a task on the amazing race. We were all going to the same place, but we all wanted to be the first to find the best directions. After all of us struck gold, we took screenshots and downloaded web pages as though our lives depended on it. The funny thing was, we weren’t more than 50 feet away from the trail head when we first started our hike. We did get some insights into the hike and came to the conclusion that having my camel back was probably a mistake because the crevasses would be so tight and the hike was so short that having heavy bags and water would just hinder your progress. We drove back to the same parking lot and walked right passed the original trail, our guide mistakingly walked down the same path! We quickly corrected her and made sure we were looking for the right landmarks to hit the entrance.
”Pass the last picnic bench and scramble your way up to the weird looking tree.” Solid instructions. I think the writers missed sarcastic opportunities in their procedure like “go passed the little palm tree, if you hit a Wendy’s, you’ve gone too far.” Maybe that’s just me. As we slowly climbed our way higher and higher, the boulders got closer and closer and all of a sudden we found ourselves standing outside an incredibly dark, narrow entry way. “The birthing canal” I whisper to myself in my head. Headlamps turned on and phone flashlights out we all looked into the canal like student doctors measuring how dilated the boulder was, the real rebirthing was about to take place. We take our first steps into this deafening chasm, my heart rate spiked and I felt like I could hear the sound of the beating echo off the sandstone walls.
I don’t know what drugs the person who went through all of this effort to squish, stretch, shimmy, shake, and slide their way through this claustrophobia inducing chasm was on, but I would like some. We slowly made our way through the tight spaces, passing another group, and climbed over and under rocks like desert rats. We eventually came to what appeared to be a dead end, but a stranger from another group crawled out of the darkness and pointed out the way. I looked at what was quite literally the smallest hole I’ve ever seen. “Are you sure this is right?” I asked the stranger. They assured me, that was in fact right.
Left to Right: Gunnar, Megs, Ricky, Maddy, Julz, Wes, Mari, Jay
After making our way through what was, without a doubt, the tightest hole I have ever squeezed my body through (apart from of course my own mother’s birthing canal… tmi?), we came to an incredible, shaded opening like a high altitude rock garden made for the gods. It was a nice place to take a much needed break. Do you see that dark, triangle hole behind all of us? That’s where we would continue on our journey. As we all climbed through the hole, we came upon the point in which this entire blog post is titled after. We stood on top of a 20 foot tall boulder that was sandwiched between two rock faces. A steep drop laid in front of us, and the only way to get down was to brace yourself between a rock and a hard place and gently lower yourself down. Gunnar, probably one of the craziest people I have ever met, was curious if there was another way around. He took off his stylish hat and crawled down below, where there was a tiny space beneath this boulder in which we were all standing on. As he crawled his way underneath I had a vision like Raven Simone, of the boulder dropping on Gunnar, 127 hours style, crushing him to death, with me standing on top of the boulder. I look at Megs with fear in my eyes and say, “I am freaking the fuck out.” right as Gunnar pops his head out from the other side of the boulder like Johnny from “The Shinning”. Thankfully my fear was overshadowed by that hilarious moment and we were able to slowly move on without anyone taking serious note of just how panicked I was. We crawled our way down sandstone stairs and through a few other small holes before stepping out into a desert garden of eden. Massive bubbled boulders towered over us as raw, unfiltered sunlight fell upon us once more. We were reborn. I felt closer to the few people I knew before the hike, and for the “strangers” that joined us, they are now good friends. A few of them were very kind and asked if I was doing okay as we walked back to the cars. My heart was still pumping but all in all I was doing well. This adventure made me think of a few videos I’ve seen of children doing “dangerous” things with a voice over saying something along the lines of, ”Let your kids experience cautious risk.” In other words, allow your kids to do something that appears dangerous, in a safe/cautious way so that they can learn, and grow as people. Did I just compare myself to toddlers learning about the world? Yes, because if we’re being honest, adults are just giant toddlers trying to go through life without dying. The Birthing Canal was a ten out of ten and I would absolutely do it again. It also gave me the confidence to do other absurd, “secret” hikes in the future.
I took a detour to the grocery store on my way back to camp because, as we have all gathered by now, I am constantly hungry. This time I got supplies to make chicken fajitas, which are a underrated camping dish. So simple, easy to clean up afterwards, and down right delicious!
Saturday night was very similar to Friday night, multiple bonfires, good music in the background, and marshmallows roasting like there’s no tomorrow. This time, postcards were passed around for everyone to write a favorite memory, story, quote, or anecdote from the trip. They would then be gathered up and passed back out at random. I did a small illustration of the bubbled boulders and Joshua trees, with a quote from J. R. R. Tolkien, “The world isn’t in your books and maps, it’s out there.” A sentiment that I’ve carried with me for the last few months that has changed my life in more ways than I can count. Once the postcards were passed back out, we all read the ones we got aloud. It was like saying what you were thankful for on Thanksgiving but so much better. Hearing what everyone had to say about the trip provided new perspectives and was genuinely heartwarming. My favorite quote from the evening was, “Outsiders, come alone, leave together.”
Sunday was filled with cleaning up the campsite, drinking coffee with a dash of Bailey’s, saying goodbye to old and new friends, and enjoying my last few hours in California. I said my last goodbye, which seems to be the hardest, and drove back to Utah.
You’re probably asking yourself where that illustration is. I’ll leave you with a moment in time, a random thought that popped into my head as I was putting on additional layers to stay warm one evening.
