Joshua Tree feels less like a national park and more like a place where someone’s ex moved to “find themselves.” The landscape looks exactly like what happens when a desert develops opinions that used to be mocked before cancel culture. Weird twisted trees. Piles of giant round rocks balanced at angles that look cool on Instagram. Every single corner of the park looks like it’s either a U2 album cover or the background of an overpriced skincare ad.
And somehow, despite being objectively beautiful, the entire place radiates aggressive “art school road trip” energy.
Half the visitors look like they arrived directly from a vintage clothing store in Silver Lake. Everyone is wearing enormous hats and carrying emotional support water bottles covered in stickers about astrology. You’ll pass people silently taking photos of a rock like they’re trying to absorb wisdom from it.T he Joshua trees themselves are especially funny because they look less like majestic desert plants and more like something a child would draw if you asked them to invent a tree from memory. They have the proportions of a Dr. Seuss hallucination. These are somewhat unique trees, but unique in the sense that they don't get enough nutrition growing up and they turn out weird.
And the hiking experience is basically wandering through increasingly hot arrangements of “desert stuff.” Rock pile. Cactus. Weird tree. Different rock pile. Guy playing a handpan for no reason. Repeat. I don't know, maybe I just don't like deserts.
The funniest part is how spiritually serious people get about the place. Every conversation sounds like someone describing a transformative ayahuasca retreat. Dude, it's just a desert with weird trees.
“The desert really strips away who you are.”
“The silence here is powerful.”
“I felt emotionally reset by the rocks.”
And yet… annoyingly… Joshua Tree is actually interesting. At sunset the whole park turns purple and gold, the rocks start glowing, the air cools down, and suddenly you understand why people become insufferable about it. For about twenty minutes, you genuinely feel like the desert might know something you don’t. If you get to enjoy them in silence, without anyone blasting music next to you.