On Saturday: Deenah, Dan, Daoud & I wake up in Indio, California. We drive from our Motel 6 to Joshua Tree National Park. I've never seen a Joshua Tree before. After driving through miles of flat space, coming upon a Joshua Tree feels like an encounter with a god.
Before I acknowledge the tinyness of myself, my travel companions, and the park, we walk the cholla cactus trail. The cholla are the first locals we encounter on our trip through Joshua Tree.
I have to mention the holiness of these plants as well. When walking through a forest, you brush up against plants all the time. But this is not the forest, and these plants demand respect.
Look but don't touch.
Walk slowly.
We drive on, leaving behind the cholla, and getting closer to my discovery of tinyness. After more space, we come upon fields of rocks. We can walk among them.
And climb among them.
We can stand and sit on them.
It's the rocks that make me re-remember how tiny I am.
Not only am I tiny. Everyone is tiny.
Dan is in the next one too, look close.
Dan is hypothetically in the next 2 images. (This one from the Orange County Register)
(next image from NASA's Visible Earth)
The rocks offer me anamnesis of scale, and allow us to play on top of them. But in exchange they demand a respect very different from the cholla cactus. A respect not so different from a wet city sidewalk. We must be careful with where we place ourselves, or else our selves get stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Or between two rocks, in this case.
But we're careful, and today no one gets stuck between any rocks or hard places.