The laughter that came out of my friends was, as always, quite warm. They chuckled heartily as my mouth hung open, processing the information they had just told me.
“Yea man, we told you like, maybe a million times. We’re not going to the Channel Islands!”
I was, for a very short while, in a state of disbelief. I had told everyone that we were getting helicoptered from island to island! I begged my classically stingy Soviet father to let me borrow his waterproof jacket! I took off an extra week of work to stare at the sea and ponder ideas for my novel!
In many ways, I should have seen it coming. There was a suspicious lack of raingear amoung my peers, and everyone was talking about how it was going to be “real toasty” during the day and “miserably cold” at night. Now, the only island I’ve ever been to is Cancun, when I was 11, and in between knocking back shirley temples and asking every tour guide about chupacabras, (again, I was 11) the weather there seemed pretty nice to me. Idyllic, even. So I began to surmise that something was off here.
“You always do this",” Micah started, before closely embracing me and squeezing me as he always does to greet me.
“Come on man we talked about this! Help me load the car?” he continued.
I had a lot of stuff, but it all fit into a bag I borrowed from Micah’s roommate, Sam. Sam has a good heart, and had always struck me as someone who was committed. The air around him, however, was always light and laissez faire. The pack he gave me was an old, muted blue, the color of a navy uniform set roasting in the sun too long. There were lots of things in it from his previous trips, mainly small trinkets, mementos of success from the outdoor world. I picked it up, and it felt good, specifically because it was filled to the brim. There is a very specific joy in using an object exactly the way it was meant to be used.
A half hour later, after debating whether to bring Settlers of Catan with us, we all settled into the car. Our starting line-up: Micah at the wheel, Noah and Yoni in the back, and me, keeping vigilant watch in the passengers seat.
“Alright, next stop Joshua Tree boys!” Micah exclaimed.
Joshua Tree, that’s right. That’s where we were going. I knew that, how could I not? My monkey brain settled down, as if I were giving it a mental banana. As I peeled the banana, it became clear to me. The Channel Islands were our first plan, and we were going to keep it in the back pocket in case the boat to the islands could accommodate us. It couldn’t, and so here we were. I suddenly recall that I was e-mailing with my doctor while the group spoke about this over the phone. I felt bad for not remembering.
We jeered in the car, and Noah, being the smartest out of all of us, quickly explained that we had 5 or 6 stops ahead of us, before we got to Joshua Tree.
And he was right. The first one? 10 minutes from Micahs spot in Oakland, we stop on the main street of Grand Lake to grab breakfast. We all want to go to different spots, and since it is the very beginning of our trip, we not only tolerate but encourage such brazen acts. Yoni is craving bagels, Micah demands to show us Colonial Donuts (“problematic name, great donuts”), and Noah wants a strong cup of coffee somewhere. I myself am not immune to this. I demand to go to Peet’s down the block, for a taste of the Impossible Breakfast Sandwich. We all reconvene in Peet’s, where we sit down and talk about pressing issues facing our country. After solving the majority of these issues, I ask for a water and we go on our way.
A drive down the coast with some of your closest friends is something that everyone should experience at least once. If you can though, I recommend doing it many, many times. There’s nothing like it. Trying to describe the sheer stupidity & genius that is witnessed in a Honda CRV replete with four Jewish men who are idiots, not in a bad way but in a classical way, is an exercise in understanding both the human condition and the unraveling of the modern world. What begins as a conversation regarding the purchase of a VR headset will eventually end as a verbal provocation, warning each other of the impending water wars we will one day have to take part in.
I can only really describe it as one of those fancy plays you might catch on Broadway: it has everything; intrigue, drama, comedy, tragedy, etc. They are a mirror of our times.
We make many stops, just as Noah predicted, but they are deftly quick and a blur in the mind once we hop back into the car. Eventually we reach our home for the night. It is a hostel not in Palm Springs, as we were originally told, but right outside, in Desert Springs.
What a difference a word can make.
As we arrive, nearly at midnight, we notice that this is simply someone’s house, that they one day, on a whim, decided to convert to a hostel. There are drywall partitions separating what used to be bedrooms. Sound travels exceptionally well, and we hear both snoring from the other rooms, as well as the sounds of a child watching Wonder Woman through a phone. The proprietor takes us on the tour, which lasts all of 15 seconds. She tells us if we are hungry in the morning we can check to see if the chickens laid any eggs. We are exhausted and slip into what can only be described as mattresses made in the deepest trenches of hell, where no light comes through, a world where memory foam has not yet been invented.
I have the worst night of sleep in perhaps a decade, and am awoken to the same child from last night, loudly proclaiming how much they did not enjoy Wonder Woman. It is 7:00 am, I brush my teeth, and begin to wake up the others. I sense we must leave quickly, as there is a creeping feeling that this may turn into a Groundhog Day situation if we don’t. Noah firmly agrees, and we are in the car and on the road by 7:30. After stopping for coffee in Palm Springs, we all agree that the only thing that will help us forget about the hostel is to head straight into the desert.
As we drive into Joshua Tree, I begin to get transfixed by everything, which is to say, nothing. I am blown away by the miles and miles of simply nothing. There is of course sand and rock and cactus, framed by the titular tree, but besides that, it is simply empty. I get excited, and I start smiling. As we unload everything from the car, Noah points to a mountain far, far into the distance.
“That’s us boys.” He smirks and we grab our packs. I don’t know what to expect, but I am excited.
It is an absolute deathtrap getting up Eagle Mountain, the fixture Noah pointed to only a few hours earlier. We are scrambling up the most challenging rockface, on the most challenging approach, on the absolute worst side to take on a mountain. I am not having a good time, and I plead with the homies to let me die on this mountain. Only 20 minutes to the top, Noah says. I decide to keep going, even though he is historically liberal with hiking estimates. A half hour later, we make it to the top.
“I didn’t think I could do that,” I say, in between huffs and glances at the glint of where we parked the car and set up camp.
“We knew you could, and now look where we are!” Micah motioned to the entire desert 5,000 feet below us.
“Yea, this was harder than most stuff we had to do in Israel.” Yoni chimes in, which makes me feel a little better.
We crack open a few high noon’s on the top, and I unwrap my cursed but undeniably good Cheez-It and fig jam sandwich. We have a good rest, and begin our scramble down the mountain, which seems somehow even more dangerous than the ascent. I don’t notice until we are halfway down, but my hands are scratched, bruised, and battered. I peek at everyone else’s, and it’s the same story. Is this what war felt like? Just you and your homies getting messed up and then bonding about it later? Probably not, but this is hopefully the closest I’ll get to it.
We arrive back at camp, and whip up a hearty pasta as a reward. It tastes incredible, and we pour in the rest of the Cheez-It bag for texture. It is just as cursed as it was in the sandwich, but in the pasta, it elevates it to another level of insanity- I could see this being served at Homeroom, in Oakland, to people who drive Subarus and go to board game bars for fun. It is exceptionally filling, and it is good.
We look up at the stars for a while. I have not felt this fulfilled in a long, long time. I think of everything that truly does not matter: algorithms, artificial intelligence, cryptocurrency, Twitter, etc. The world must be too big for that- it has to be, I hope. I swiftly shift to everything that truly does matter: the sight of my friends by my side, scaling the top of a mountain. Good art that makes me stop in my tracks. My parents laughing while I tell a bad story. The first bite of an apple. Being vulnerable, after times that make me not want to be. Thinking of everything that can happen, and getting excited. I fall back to the nothing around me, and the pure ecstasy it brings me.
Later that night, I won my first ever game of Catan. It was silly, and I won almost unknowingly, but it still felt good. In a strange way, it filled me with hope for the next hurdle we were to take on tomorrow, Pinto Mountain.
I slept well. Micah and Yoni regale us in the morning with how a mountain lion was licking them through our tent. Everybody laughs, and without an ounce of doubt, believes them. We are all very lucky.
We pack up the car, park at the base of Pinto, and begin our next journey.
With 60 pounds on my back, I begin to grin.