Joshua Tree to Mariposa

We drive through the Mojave Desert to Barstow on Sunday morning and all the Joshua Trees are praying.  Then there are no more trees; we are in an area where there is absolutely nothing growing, only sand and rock and distant barren mountains.  This is real desert, yet there are still little trailers here and there, connected to electric poles.  I suppose some people are attracted to this nothingness.

When we cross the pass into Bakersfield, there is more vegetation - grass and sparse trees, and then rows and rows of trees where there is irrigation, those great orchards that produce so many of the fruits and nuts that we depend on - apricots, almonds, pistachios.  Then corn, and the first of many well-tended fields of grapes that we will see in this phase of our journey.  It is very dry here, though, with brown grass all along the road, and we cross over several completely dry riverbeds.  This is the part of the country that has been decimated by wildfires earlier this summer, and there are big illuminated roadway signs:

SEVERE DROUGHT

LIMIT OUTDOOR WATERING

The political battle over water is apparent, and we see several billboard-type signs in the orchards and fields of crops:

• FOOD GROWS WHERE WATER FLOWS
• NO WATER = NO CROPS = NO JOBS
• IS GROWING FOOD WASTING WATER?

There is more brown grass, and acres of dead trees as we climb into the mountains to Mariposa, a pretty little mountain town that reminds us a little of Highlands - lots of shops, hiking stores, good restaurants.

I ask one merchant about the drought and he says, "The grass is always brown this time of year, but the pine beetle has killed 66 million trees."  So I tell him about the hemlock woolly adelgid in our part of the world and how it has transformed the forests, and we commiserate together about insects and blights.  We splurge on a good dinner at Savoury's Restaurant and check into the lovely little Mariposa Lodge.  There is a cool breeze blowing and, for the first night in a very long time, we have a screened window open.