SPACE AND TIME

The area around California's Joshua Tree National Park has long exerted a gravitational pull on artists, seekers, and freewheelers. But this secret desert hideout isn't so secret anymore. Rosecrans Baldwin reflects on what's changing and finds that in a place like this, some things will always stay the same.

- Rosecrans Baldwin

TIME, IN THE HIGH DESERT, moves more slowly. It certainly feels that way in Joshua Tree. My wife, Rachel, and I drive out to the region at least once a year, to sink into that change of speed. As a writer, I find the area both intimidating and beguiling-a heady, inspiring combination.

Others have felt the headiness, too. Across generations, Joshua Tree has drawn waves of film people, music people, fine artists. Ann Magnuson, Jim Morrison, Ed Ruscha. It's not for everyone, but it is for some-those who choose to stay and build and nurture in a setting that can feel isolating with all that empty space, all those cactus shadows stretching across the sand.

Lately, though, the desert is becoming less empty. In 2021, Joshua Tree National Park welcomed more than 3 million sightseers, a 50 percent increase from 2015. In the town of Yucca Valley, not far from the park gates, tax revenues from hotels and vacation rentals went up sixfold in five years. Residents described the influx to me as a mix of real estate developers, big-city exiles, and people buying second homes. House prices have exploded. People are worried about over-tourism. A year ago, I stayed with an actor friend in the area who said the last property on his block had just been converted he now lived on a street of Airbnbs.

Hearing that, I got curious about what that meant for the artists who did so much to make the place compelling-both for other artists and for commercial interests, too. What had the desert offered them in the first place, and what had changed?