The Trees Of Life
Plus, teen nostalgia, California travel and sneaky greens.
An hour’s drive outside Palm Springs and we arrive in the Mojave desert: a dusty, arid tundra that meets the bright blue sky. Sprinkled throughout are the National Park’s main attraction—Joshua trees. The Insta-famous plant is quirky for its craggily shape; branches that twist in odd directions, with fuzzy green tips. I learn from my Tallgrass Tours guide Nancy, that the tree gets its shape from past trauma—when the wind or the occasional snowfall causes a fissure, a bud forms, resulting in a new branch. A completely unharmed Joshua tree is one body that grows straight upward to the sky, with no separate branches. But looking out at the desert, I spot only a couple Joshua trees that take the form of a single body without branches.