Some landscapes become part of our imagination long before we ever visit them. Joshua Tree is one of those — the surreal silhouettes of the trees against a fading sky, the stacked boulder formations that look arranged rather than geological, the sense of a landscape that operates by rules different from anywhere else. I had seen those images for years before I finally drove through the park.
As I write this, my social media feed is full of images from Death Valley that look nothing like the park I drove through. The super bloom is happening — the desert floor covered in wildflowers in colors that seem impossible for a place that receives less than two inches of rain in an average year. Gold and purple and white across the valley floor, the Panamint Mountains behind them, the salt flats of Badwater Basin in the distance. Every image is better than the last one. The most spectacular wildflower display since 2016, by most accounts. And I am not there.