Salvation Canyon. Ed Rosenthal
to a jar of powdered milk on a high shelf. I scraped the crust off the powder top, then mixed some in my coffee. My eyes were drawn to the family in the nook near the door. To avoid them seeing me seeing them, I focused my attention on the brass staples circling the backs of the red Naugahyde chairs. They matched the metal-buttoned suspenders on the man’s jeans. The waitress in her white apron brought the family English muffins. The man buttered his, and I watched the melting gold fill the crusty crannies before he dipped it in his pooling orange yolk. He savored the egg and smiled to his wife as if he had sold The Bank of America Towers. With my neck craned over, to keep an eye on the family, I waited for the waitress to return from her conversation with the man working the grill in the kitchen, then asked, “How much for the coffee?”
“$1.50.”
I carried the foam cup in front of me, down the center of the café, and as I opened the door by their niche, the wife said, “Sure, Honey,” to a request from the little boy and leaned forward to stick a bacon strip into his mouth.
I continued up Route 62. After miles of broken windows and shuttered storefronts, I reached Route 248, the west entrance to Joshua Tree National Park and Black Rock Canyon Campground. The access road led to the ranger station, where I usually parked. The wooden building had a sign that read, “Park Closed,” but cars had filled the spots.
I drove down to the regular parking lot, which was packed, and after searching for a spot, I saw an old, bearded guy standing by his trailer.
“Hi, I’m on a day hike. Do you know a place I can park?”
“Right there is okay. I’ve seen hikers leave their car in that place.”
“Thanks, that’s great.”
I pulled my Passat into the dirt across from his red trailer. The kind of space you would not know is there until you make it. Heat hung over the lot. Knowing it would be even hotter as the day wore on, I was in a rush to get going. It was hot enough to leave my jacket in the trunk. I glanced at the red and blue water jugs in my new wicker containers, but I was in a hurry and figured that I had enough in the camelback for the usual three-hour hike.
I stepped away from the silver trunk onto the sand and strapped on my pack. Still a little sleepy, even after the coffee, I asked a last question of the white-beard, “Hey, can you remind me where the access trail is to Warren View?”
“Sure.” The helpful man pointed thirty yards away.
It was close to 1 p.m. I strolled up an incline from the campground to the road, and the familiar white water tower appeared behind the trail. West on the dirt road to the trailhead, I kept a steady pace until a brown and tan coyote stepped out of the scrub and met me. Instead of circling to avoid contact, it planted its paws in my path. The trailhead sign was visible between his ears, almost as if he were park property.
For the first time in two decades, a coyote was blocking my way to Warren View. Its black snout ten feet away. The brown-tinged auburn fur against the brown twigs of the desert. The narrow eyes above the white chin. We stood in the heat above the beige and green tents in the campground. He seemed to address me. Me, in my white short-sleeve shirt and beige shorts, the coyote in its beige fur, tinged with white.
It was late midday toward the end of September; any hikers would already be well into their hikes. We stood and waited. The auburn fur on his hump rumpled in a warm breeze. I leaned on my hiking stick, watched until the creature turned and crossed the high weeds behind it. Its bushy tail left the road and blended with the white buds of dried borage and disappeared. I headed to the trailhead.
The trailhead sign came up in fifty yards on the left side of the access road, and I crossed over to take it at about 1:15 p.m. I planned to be back at my car by 4:30 p.m. The familiar sandy trail was lined with dried shrubs and succulents, and after about a quarter mile it reached Black Rock Canyon Wash, where the trail started in earnest. I stepped down into the forty-yard-wide, pebbled channel and, out of habit, turned right. I didn’t need to reconnoiter or correlate my direction to any compass point. The wash didn’t have a drop of water in it. Lined by a landscape of short grasses and rocks, shriveled purple prickly pear blossoms, and dried yucca wands that had sprouted in spring, the wash broadened and shrunk as it rose on a gradual incline for about a mile.
After a mile, the wash passed a set of ramshackle water tanks made of large rocks which settlers used to collect water and feed cattle, and where I had a memory of my daughter calling me five years earlier and proudly announcing, “Dad, I passed my driver’s test finally,” as I dreaded the day she would actually be on the road. At the same place where the tanks sit, the wash turned steep and dragged on my ankles as it narrowed to about thirty yards across.
I stepped along on the steeper gradient still inside the wash, the only change being that I was conscious of the drag on my boots and pebbles falling off each time I lifted my foot, leaving deeper footprints in the sand. A half-mile past the rock tanks, I reached a familiar change in the landscape, yellow grass hills no more than fifty feet tall. The trail continued uphill on a looping dirt track weaving through a series of narrow canyons all inhabited by brittle scraggly weeds. Occasional Joshua trees lined the dunes. The hot sun hung in front of me but disappeared inside the relief of each canyon. The rock trail disappeared at times, when my footsteps led directly into one of the grassy hills, but I knew from past trips to continue circling through the maze in the general direction of the sun. After a half mile of circling through the maze, I reached a fork in the road with signs to Warren Vista and Warren View.
The air was stale and hot with a small breeze. The heat was excessive, though the lid on my hat kept the glare from my face. As always, I chose the sign to the right towards Warren View. The trail steepened a bit and continued up for a hundred yards then ramped up a green hillside, where the grass hunched close to the ground, woven into sparse patches alongside large white boulders, fir trees, and junipers. The trip up the steep, wooded hill took twenty minutes. At the top, I arrived at a plateau under a large sky with a row of trees at its extreme edge. My heart raced. It felt so good to be closing in on my cherished view of San Jacinto. But I also felt some time pressure. I rushed along what was left of the trail, an indistinct footpath twirling through the foot-high, windblown grasses of the plateau.
A gray cone of stones and dirt appeared. At about one-hundred-feet tall, it was the dominant feature of the landscape before me, and it would make the perfect point from which to view San Jacinto. I stepped through the indistinct grass path without paying much attention until I saw a sign I’d never seen before. A hundred yards beyond the cone, in that row of trees at the far edge of the plateau, the sign read “West Trail.” I walked ahead to the high, conical pile, but when I got there, I was still confused by the sign. I walked past the cone and craned my neck left to search for the West Trail sign on the line of trees but saw nothing. I gave up the search for the black and white letters, walked back to the cone-shaped pile, and took my first steps up.
I had never mounted this cone to see Warren View, and having never seen this formation before, the steep angle of incline surprised me. Loose stones and dirt rolled out from under the pressure of my boots. Then my cell phone rang. A co-worker. I watched my step and let the call go to voicemail. Treading with care on the unstable ground, I reached a spot where two grey rocks stuck from the hillside, making a chair. The last few steps made me feel the mid-day heat more than the previous two miles. I took the pack from my back and squeezed my hips into the one-foot-wide “chair,” caught my breath, and sat to admire the Palm Desert expanse, snow-capped San Jacinto Peak, and the jade-green Coachella Valley._
I pulled my lunch out from the outer pocket of my pack. I sat down in the crevice with relief. I sprinkled salt on the fresh red and yellow tomato and sunk my jaws in. The peanut butter on fresh baked bread was next. I licked the excess off the crusts and savored each bite of the sandwich. I took a long sip, nearly emptying the camelback.
A rock tumbled down the cone. My seat was precariously high on a peak under the cerulean sky, across from the white crown of San Jacinto. Ending my reverie, awake to the heat, I stood up and shuffled around, settling the orange pack on my back as pebbles slipped from under my feet. After establishing my balance, I placed each step carefully, feeling for loose rocks under my boots, and threaded