If you don’t visit beauty often, you forget it. It was time to get out of the ugly. I hadn’t been hill-stomping for weeks.
At 0:Dark:30 my car headed for the hills through a mizzling rain. I turned into the trailhead parking lot and my headlights caught a sign that read, “Day Use Only. Sunrise to Sunset.” It was 6:04. The sun wouldn’t rise until 6:34. Beautiful.
Fuck ’em, I thought, as I pulled in and parked anyway.
Must cogitate over my crime now. What would I tell a ranger if confronted on the trail? How about, “Gosh, hasn’t the sun already risen behind the clouds?” Yeah, that’s it. Acting ignorant would be a beautiful excuse.
A light rain pelted on the brow of my hat as I slipped on my jacket and donned my daypack. At 6:08 I pushed through the fading gloom and made my way up the trail to beautiful Hidden Valley.
Hidden Valley is one of the most popular hikes in Joshua Tree National Park. That’s why it’s best to visit it at 6:08 in the morning, on a weekday, in the rain. I was the only soul out there, and had the beauty of the whole valley to myself.
A short climb took me over the rocky rim and into this granite-strewn wonder. At this point a loop trail takes over. And at the start of the loop is a sign, directing hikers to walk clockwise through the loop. I went the opposite way. When the world travels clockwise, I prefer widdershins. I believe it beautifies the human spirit to be contrasuggestible and contumacious in the face of officious rules.
Such beauty I encountered, walking widdershins! I had forgotten just how majestic these towering rocks could be. Tragically, I left my camera at home. But I already had plenty of photos from prior visits. This would have to be a day for absorbing beauty through the natural senses, without the fuss from including a glass lens.
This photo of Hidden Valley, and the rest, are from a prior visit. The rock pictured here seems to have eroded below faster than above, producing a strange curl formation.
One of my natural senses–my cognitive sense–became especially active. A beautiful inspiration struck me, and I reached for a different kind of recording device. A device I had made absolutely sure to bring along. It was a device for recording those reflections from the cognitive sense, that are too easily erased by time.
I reached for my pen.
And that’s when I realized I had forgotten to bring paper. Beautiful move, moron! Goddamn me!
The palm of my hand would have to serve as stationery. So I recorded my sensory experience, ink to hand.
A wide view of Hidden Valley. Notice there are no people? Notice the long shadows? If you want to beat the crowds, you have to hike this valley while everyone else is still in bed.
The rare desert rain steeped the sage, cheesebush, and wormwood, releasing their stored-up aromas. Here was beauty for my osmic senses, I noted just below my thumb.
I paused to listen to the silence. It was there. A cottony vault of beautiful nothingness, for my otic senses. Then, one-by-one, delicate sounds crept through the cotton. The sough of my breath passing softly through my nares. The distant caw of a crow rattling off the rocks. And the susurration of thrumming engines from an airliner high aloft, above the clouds.
Here’s a hunk of granite that looks like one of my teeth after a lifetime of too many sweets.
About halfway through the counter-clockwise circumambulation of this loop trail, my bladder sent me a tactile sensory message. There were no other hikers around, so I searched for a spot to perform an illegal act in private. Pissing outdoors may be against the law, but in the wilds it is primeval beauty for our nostalgic senses. It connects us with our ancient ancestors, who also pissed in the wilds. And in much the same way.
This escarpment is called “The Great Burrito” by rock-climbers. A few years ago a cragsman fell to his death at this very spot. Perhaps he should have opted to climb “The Little Taquito” instead.
But then it occured to me that enough people have rained their uric acid upon the rocks of this popular trail. There was no urgent need for me to add more, so I decided to hold it in. For me, this was a beautiful beau geste. But I hope my ancestors weren’t disappointed.
If the Chinese had built their great wall out of something like this, perhaps the Mongols would have stayed to the north.
No rangers stopped me before sunrise. The light rain felt refreshing on my face and skin. The boulder skyscrapers impressed again, with all their forgotten glory. And the trail remained untrammeled throughout the hike, because nobody else dared brave the wee hours and wetness of this morning.
That’s how beautiful this day was.
The hills have eyes.
I drove home to the beautiful vibes of Duke Ellington on the radio. The light rain intensified to a downpour. Seemed the hour I chose to hike in this storm was beautiful timing. And now I had fresh in my mind that one thing all souls thirst for, as surely as the desert landscape thirsts for water from heaven.
I possessed the memory of beauty.
This rock is waiting for the right moment to topple over upon an unsuspecting hiker. Which is why people really should stay away from Hidden Valley.
Categories: Nature
Chasing Unicorns 
First picture, for some reason, reminded me of a foot in dire need of a podiatrist. Congrats to you for having the courage to buck the crowd, both parking and walking “widdershins.” And what’s more natural than peeing in the wild? My dog does it all the time. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Come to think of it, that rock does look kind of like a foot with a bone spur on the heel. Maybe it’s a warning to hikers.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What a beautiful way to start the day — drizzle and all. Sometimes, poor weather is best, as you get different colors and critters. I also find that walking a loop in the opposite direction is terrific — it is like a completely different walk sometimes because all the angles are different.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Any wilderness area in the rain feels very different from fair weather. But in the desert it’s a rare experience, and much more unique. Refreshing, too.
The view is indeed quite a bit different going the other way on a loop trail. But if the trail is crowded, I just go with the flow. It can get tiresome stepping off the path to let people pass.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Beautiful post re “Beauty and the Non-compliant Hiker.” Enjoyed trekking along with you. Glad you beat the drenching rain.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks for coming along.
I’m glad I beat the downpour, also. A little rain can be fun. A lot of rain turns into misery real fast.
LikeLike
“Widdershins”… Just learned a new word. “Beauty”… I get it. As I once wrote somewhere in here, “Beauty is an experience.”
And living in a tourist town, I also get the early morning thing. But it’s a good idea to watch for the autochthonous resident… and maybe carry some bear spray.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I got the impression you live in Frisco, except I’m not aware there are bears in Frisco. However, bear spray comes in handy for some of those pesky two-legged critters, also.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Northern Nevada, at the northeastern corner of a large alpine lake. Although I think half of San Francisco has recently settled-in for the duration. I grew up (mostly) along the coast south of the Bay Area.
One of those “two-legged critters” very (very) nearly got a full, point-blank load of bear spray a couple of years back. Alas, the local police have cooler heads, and the near recipient of my capsaicinoid-enhanced wrath was merely given a free ride out of town. This year, there’s a juvenile coyote who seems to be pressing his luck.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ah, I think I know where you’re talking about. That’s beautiful country, but damn cold. Even in the summer it gets cold there. At least, cold by my standards.
I’m glad everything worked out well, dealing with that two-legged critter. Sounds like a scary situation.
We get coyotes in our front yard fairly often. So far they’ve never caused us trouble. They’re usually very shy, and run off at the first sign of a human. We like them, but we don’t feed them. I think the ones that get fed have the greatest potential for attacking a human.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The town population usually halves in the winter, but I’m a year-rounder here. I love the winters.
The bears and coyotes here aren’t often much of a concern. The bears mostly move around town according to the trash-collection schedule and avoid people. But I had a peculiar incident with a bear many years back that a local ranger chewed me out for not reporting. Probably the same bear had to be put down about two weeks later after it injured a sleeping backpacker. The coyotes are mostly just opportunists, probably responsible for most of the small domestic animal disappearances. Occasionally, however, they’ll chase people… usually kids. I don’t know what they’d do if they actually caught someone. They’re really kind of timid animals. Tourists (and the local college students) feeding the animals is probably the biggest problem… really stupid.
As for my two-legged encounter:
https://luminousaether.wordpress.com/2018/10/19/not-me-too/
P/W is “dragonfly”
LikeLiked by 1 person
Seems to me like you can handle yourself pretty well with disrespectful men. As for “privilege,” I felt kind of surprised that the other men sided with you against him. Male privilege can be rather powerful, too.
But that’s a road that can get very confusing to go down. I’m glad it all worked out for you, so that you could jog safely in the future.
LikeLiked by 1 person