Late Saturday afternoon I headed out with Zak, Becca, Maggie, and Ryon to Joshua Tree State Park, over two hours south of LA.
It was Becca's astrological bad day, and sure enough, she got a speeding ticket on the way. So it was already night by the time we got there to set up our tent, but it didn't matter because the full moon was a bright lantern in the sky. Tent successfully assembled, we scrambled up some nearby boulders and put together open-faced avocado, tomato, and goat cheese sandwiches on Italian bread for dinner. Our appetites satisfied, we lounged on the boulders for a couple hours, starting up at the moon and stars. I even caught sight of not one, but two shooting stars (I made my wishes). Before heading to bed we took a short night walk around the edge of the campground, then fell asleep as we heard coyotes howling in the distance.
The next morning we decided to brave the sun and heat and go for a hike. So, at 11am in mid-July in the Mojave desert, we set out on a 7 mile round trip hike to the Hidden Palms Oasis. I was wary about doing this: a 7 mile hike in the desert in the middle of the day and I didn't think we had enough water with us. But the others were confident and I didn't want to be a debbie-downer, so we went anyways.
The desert landscape is beautiful, and even varied in only 3.6 miles. We saw some quails scurrying away and a bunch of lizards and even a couple hawks circling above. The plant life itself is pretty cool, and I was amused to find that several of the plants that used to landscape my front garden were there growing in the Mojave desert, especially the Yucca and I found a green bush with light blue berries that looked a lot like ground cover we used to have, only in bush form (oh Buffalo).
We made a couple stops along the way, and finally we made it to the Oasis. It was nestled in a canyon and was full of palm trees. But it was dry. No water, not even a puddle of mud. And we had been looking forward to jumping in the entire way there. Hells yeah we were demoralized. So we munched on some honey-wheat pretzels and melted chocolate peanut butter trail mix (I picked the salt off my pretzels cause I didn't want to further dehydrate myself). Then it was time to head back. The climb out of the canyon was a bit strenuous, and we made our first stop as soon as we were out. Zak was sitting to my right and was visibly shaking. Becca was to my left and didn't seem to be doing too hot either (hah! reverse pun!). All of our fingers were swollen. And we by the end of the break we had less than two liters of water left....oh shit man.
Becca, Maggie, and I ended up getting ahead and Ryon stayed back with Zak. Surprisingly enough, I was feeling relatively fine. I had been conservative with my water intake, on the return trip taking only a sip at every water break; we needed to get it to stretch. Meanwhile I kept remembering the Discovery Channel show I saw about a group of boy scouts who got lost hiking in the desert and ran out of water and one of them ended up dying from heat stroke.. I was only comforted by the fact that we only had 2 more miles to go, which really isn't that far.
We were somewhere between the 2 and 1 miles remaining markers when Becca started to not look so great. We took another rest, then got back up and kept going. At this point I felt nothing but determination to get back and get water. We only had an inch left in our bottle. But I was feeling good, I knew if anything I'd be able to make it, buy more water for the others and double back to meet them if they had to stop. Luckily this was unnecessary and everyone made it out okay; Zak and Ryon weren't even too far behind us girls.
Back at the car, we chugged the big bottle of water that was stowed away in the cooler, Zak ate a banana, and we booked it back to the visitor's center. More water in me I decided to stand on the sidewalk to soak up the breeze rather than sit in the car waiting for Maggie and Ryon to get back from the restroom. There was a "Beware of Bees" sign in the window of the ranger station, but it was rather vague as to where the bees actually were, and I hadn't seen any except for the ones climbing in and out of the water fountain's mouthpiece (useful, right?). So I'm standing there, feeling pretty nice, when all of a suddent it feels like the back of my head was just stabbed with a needle. And then there was a bee on my face and there, another needle stabbed into my nose. By this point I'm screaming for help because there are bees on my face and at least one still in my hair and I'm feeling one crawling on my closed eyelid: "god help me if that bee stings my eye..." I thought. Becca came out of the car and pulled me in. Zak got the bee out of my hair and pulled the stingers out. It hurt SO BADLY. I generally consider myself to have a good pain threshold, but this was bad. And did the ranger station have ice? No, of course it didn't. Why would a ranger station in the desert want to carry a stock of ice? Thankfully some fellow hikers the next car over did and gave me some. So there we were, five sweat-soaked, dehydrated, wiped out hikers, Zak holding a piece of ice on my nose as I iced my head, driving home.
Despite the lack of water and the bee stings, it was still one of my favorite life adventures thus far. It's getting put on the list alongside riding a bicycle 32km round trip through Normandy to the American Cemetery at Omaha Beach.
