Desert ecologists predict the extinction of the Joshua Tree by the end of the century — for the new-age spiritual community, this is really “harshing the vibe.”
The walls of the Frontier Cafe are plastered with new-age posters depicting psychedelic mushrooms, stacked stones, drum circles and crystal bowls. Messages in bold fonts written on cardstock announce local offerings:
“Liquid Shakti: Ecstatic Dance — Sundays 11 A.M. to 2 P.M.”
“Medicine Owl Wellness Studio: Astrology Readings, Energy Work, Integrative Massage”
“Resonant Realms: Frequencies of the Heart — An Ambient Sound Journey and Cacao Ceremony”
“Cosmic Gong Bath experience: Institute of Mentalphysics’ Joshua Tree Retreat Center”
Just off the Twentynine Palms Highway, scribbles on the cafe chalkboard warn breakfast-rush customers of at least a 20 minute wait time, but people don’t seem to mind at this popular stop on the way to Joshua Tree National Park.
Fitness junkies come to Joshua Tree to hike winding trails or to scale building-sized boulder piles. Photographers come to capture the soft oranges and pinks that dance across the sunset sky — or to gaze at the stars through a midnight tapestry devoid of light pollution.
Among the many reasons visitors find themselves in the desert, there’s a consensus among the local spiritual community that people feel the call of the Yucca Valley and its “special energy.”
But, these days, intensifying heat spells threaten the landscape where visitors seek to recharge. If climate extremes continue to worsen, the Joshua trees themselves could disappear by the end of the century leaving Joshua Tree without Joshua trees.
Talk about bad juju!
Posters advertise the new-age spiritual activities in Joshua Tree.
The Frontier Cafe welcomes fun-seeking tourists and the spiritual community.
Artist Valerie Davis lives in a house the color of rust, and Joshua trees jutt out from the ground in her front yard. From her porch deck, she gestures openly with her hands, her short-cut nails painted a bright crimson. She points towards the road outside her home — in the distance, Davis can see the towering chapel spire from the Institute of Mentalphysics.
Davis has lived in the city of Twentynine Palms for over 25 years. Her paintings seem to mimic stained glass, combining acrylic paint and hot glue to create rainbow mosaic portraits of goddess mandalas. Glass sculptures of twisted tree branches and carved crystal wands sit on display shelves in her living room.
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She participates in local art exhibitions and, at the Mentalphysics’ gift shop, she sells copper spinning rods — handcrafted “energy twirlers” — that she explained can help balance chakras and relieve stress.
A little instruction card reads: “Hold the copper tube firmly in one hand…after a short period the Twirler will begin to move on its own. At this point the Twirler is attuned to your vibrational frequency.”
“Use in conjunction with feng shui to detect energy vortexes and stagnant energy in your home and surroundings,” it continues.
The women who manage the Mentalphysics’ gift shop encourage guests to test the copper spinning rods that, they say, draw energy from its beholder and from special points in its environment. These points where the rods are believed to spin the most are called “energy vortexes” — locations in the earth where the vibes just feel different. Visitors report feeling more relaxed and in tune with their emotions because of the solitude that the desert brings them. These spots are characterized by grand geological formations, or twisting tree trunks stretching in odd ways towards the sky.
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According to a visitor map, the Mentalphysics Institute sits on 18 different vortices. A stroll through the property reveals an abstract sculpture garden and, along its pathways, little wooden signs depicting spiral icons staked into the ground. Searching for the posts is like a scavenger hunt.
When a person stands in an energy vortex, Davis explained, “it’s like breathing a sigh of relief.”
The key to feeling the change of pace is to be open minded, she says. Though, a person doesn’t need to be so attuned with the realm of new-age spirituality to understand it – all they have to do is notice the change in pace compared to life in the big cities.
“The energy down there – the signs and the gas stations and the traffic – it’s so ugly and everybody’s in a hurry. And then you come back here, it’s nice and peaceful.”
Indigenous tribes have been stewards of the land where Joshua Tree National Park stands since before American settlers arrived in the 19th century. The park is located at the intersection of the traditional homelands of the Serrano, Cahuilla and Chemehuevi.
In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, granting citizens over the age of 21 an allowance to claim land ownership as a part of American westward expansion.
“As more settlers arrived,” reports the parks service website, “the land the Native Americans knew once changed.”
From 1863 to 1976, homesteaders began taking ownership of land across the American continent and Native communities were displaced. According to a National Parks Service report on Joshua Tree, various anchors of indigenous life were broken. Buffalo numbers decreased, water was redirected, more non-native crops were planted and native plant diversity began to decline.
Even the name “Joshua tree” changed. In the mid-nineteenth century, the common name is widely thought to have been coined by Mormon settlers who named the tree after their biblical prophet. The Cahuilla tribe calls it the “Hunuvat chiy’a,” or the “Humwichawa.”
Davis, lady of the energy twirlers, is a retired artist who moved to Joshua Tree from Scottsdale, Arizona. Like many of her neighbors, she relocated in the 2000s for the blossoming creative scene. Although she doesn't know any Native locals who still live in the area personally, their image lives somewhat in her mind’s eye as facilitators of “paranormal experiences.”
“You can definitely feel the energy of the Native Americans,” she said. “But I haven’t had any out of body experiences or anything. That would be fun.”
Markings on the rocks were painted over by a Disney film crew in the '60s.
Tourists who hike along the Joshua Tree trails might come across the Barker dam trail, and while the spot is famous for the dried up waterbed, the winding trails eventually reveal a cave inscribed with petroglyphs. The markings depict simple illustrations that look like stick figures of tiny men.
A label placard calls the markings the “mysteries of the desert.”
“Native Americans, migrating through here in their continuous search for food and water, left behind evidence of their activities,” the plaque reads. “Please help us by reporting any vandalism you observe.”
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In reality, the actual cave markings aren’t entirely part of “woo woo” history. While some of the original inscriptions were found preserved and faded by erosion on the ancient rock, a Disney film crew in the ‘60s painted over the illustrations to embolden them for an episode in the television anthology, “Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.”
“They defaced them basically,” Davis said. “I don’t like to go there – it kind of bums me out.”
Over time, only the old Joshua trees would bear witness to the way the landscape and atmosphere change in the desert – but even these giants are threatened by forces driven by industry: climate change.
“Oh, the trees were so healthy—they were just thriving. They were just green and huge,” she recalled. “They’re not looking too good now … They’re not as green – they’re more yellowish.”
The weather has also changed, she said. “It used to snow more often. It doesn’t snow very much.”
In the past year, Davis recalled only a single good rain.
Though the plant is well adapted for hot and dry conditions, it requires a bit of rainfall each year to thrive. When that minimum necessary rainfall doesn’t come, she waters the Joshua trees in her front yard.
The branching of the Joshua trees can indicate older age.
To someone driving the long, meandering road through the park for the first time, old giant trees with branches that contort towards the clouds scatter over the land.
For a single tree, it can take approximately six years for a junior Joshua tree to grow one foot tall, and under the most ideal circumstances, adults can become centurions. In the forest park, the tallest tree — named the Barber Pole — stands almost 45 feet tall, and it's estimated to be almost 1000 years old.
The problem is, “there’s no baby Joshua Trees, there are just large adults that are, in most cases, more than 100 years old, but there’s nothing coming up below them,” said Dr. Cameron Barrows.
Barrows is a conservation biologist at the University of California, Riverside. He can see the southern edge of the Joshua Tree National Park from his home.
The trees are not growing because of steadily increasing temperatures. A period of frost and snow is essential for the young Joshuas to bud and flower, but increasing droughts and shorter cold seasons every year make it difficult for the juveniles to grow.
Barrows is less worried about the adult trees since they have spent decades acclimating arid conditions. He explained that once established, the larger trees rely on an extensive root system that spreads out underground. If any rain falls, the trunks store moisture – that’s the secret to survival during heat spells.
“In any healthy forest, any healthy stand of anything, you need to have both adults and babies, and if you don’t have the babies, you basically have a bunch of senior citizen facilities without any grade schools nearby, and those communities fall apart.”
As a naturalist, Barrows builds his research by collecting physical data and developing theories, but he also stops and observes a sense of peace from within himself.
“So I don’t have any adherence to a particular religion or anything like that,” said Barrows. “But, when my colleagues and my students are hiking in the desert, we often stop and just look at each other and realize how good we feel at that point, that there is a feeling of well-being, of sort of strength and health.”
Joshua tree branches reach for the sky.
In Landers, an unincorporated community in California’s Mojave desert that feels a lot like nowheresville, flashes of sunlight reflect off a pristine white dome. It sits almost 20 miles north of the Mentalphysics Retreat Center — the property with all the energy vortexes.
On the outside, the center’s wooden panels fuse together like segments of a citrus fruit. Robust palm trees guard its perimeter, and the inside opens up into a broad cylindrical cavern. The employees explain that the structure was completely constructed without screws or nails.
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Yoga groups and energy vortex hunters — among tourists — come to the Integratron for holistic healing experiences. At $55 per-person pricetag head, reservations for public sound baths in the dome fill up weeks in advance.
Davis, the craftswoman of the energy twirlers, encourages visitors to visit the Integratron, which promises a “Fusion of Art, Science, and Magic.”
Participants enter the dome of the Integratron and climb a steep flight of stairs to the second floor where it feels like standing on the inside of a snowglobe.
Neatly placed crystal bowls are placed on the opposite edge of the stairs, and a young woman — the session leader — sits in a fuzzy, avocado-green hoodie waiting for guests to walk toward the center of the floor. She encourages everyone to conjure silent intentions in their minds and lie down on sanitized mats arranged in an outer circle.
Before the sound bath begins, workers encourage silence and visitors stow away their cell phones. The employees say that the bowl frequencies can lull people to sleep so, as a courtesy to guests who use the time to consciously meditate, the workers hand out little white nose strips designed to dampen the snoring of sleeping participants.
As visitors drift into a relaxed state, the session leader traces the rim of the crystal bowls with a handheld mallet, and the room rings with sustained vibrations.
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The Integratron gift shop sells baskets of lodestone magnets, stickers of little green cartoon men and CD copies of meditation music.
The Integratron was founded by an aircraft mechanic from Ohio named George Van Tassel. He immersed himself in the works of 19th century inventors and futurists like Nikola Tesla and Georges Lakhovsky.
As if pulled from the pages of a Ray Bradburry novel, Van Tassel claimed that aliens from Venus visited him in his sleep, took him for a ride on their spaceship and bestowed upon him the blueprints for the dome as a vessel of personal healing and time travel. (Davis explained that back in the early ‘60s, the Mojave desert used to be a frequent venue for UFO conventions.)
Van Tassel died mysteriously at the age of 67 in his home before the Integratron’s construction was completed. Davis believes that though his death was sudden, it was not an accident, and that it had something to do with the “aliens” who lived in a shack up the hill.
Though the inventor may not have envisioned the Integratron permanently grounded in its “earth bound” state, according to Davis, Van Tassel had the foresight to imagine the structure as a “rejuvenation machine,” — according to his obituary in the Desert Sun newspaper, he dreamed that the structure could serve to combat the human aging process.
For some avid sound bath enthusiasts, like Leanne West, the actual point of the experience is to rejuvenate one’s inner spiritual energy centers.
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“It’s like an adrenaline rush,” West says, coming out of the sound bath. “It energized me.”
She’s from Nashville, Tennessee and has traveled the nation seeking out sound baths. West found the Integratron to be the most unique sound bath she had attended, and she attributes the feeling to the location’s “high frequency.”
“People don’t realize that they’re holding on to things that might create that blockage,” she said. “That’s what these sound events help, is with that release of that blocked and stagnant energy.”
First-timer Rosie Banta used her time in the dome to focus more on the physical feelings in the moment.
“It felt, like, vibrating in one ear and then going out the other — like little pulses and vibrations in the body. It felt kind of warm too,” Banta said.
As a hair-cutter, Banta said she was called to the sound bath because her clients recommended the visit — and even more still, she was drawn to the Integratron because a television show advertised it as an iconic experience in Joshua Tree.
Dr. Lynn Sweet, who also works at U.C. Riverside,as a research ecologist, creates digital models that predict where Joshua trees can survive. The trees are primarily found in the southwestern United States with some found in northwestern Mexico.
In a science direct journal article published in 2023, Sweet and Barrows collected data assessing the threats from both climate change and, somewhat surprisingly, from local green energy development in the Mojave Desert.
Barrows cares deeply for the Joshua tree, known to botanists as Yucca brevifolia. While rising temperatures are directly correlated to the release of fossil fuels into the atmosphere, he says another industry — one touted as a solution to climate change — is a major threat to the local desert ecosystem: solar farms.
The developers break up the desert soil, disturbing the communities of critters and vegetation beneath the surface, which leaves thousands of local species at risk of habitat loss. This includes the endangered Mojave desert tortise, the threatened Mojave ground squirrel and the area’s definitng Joshua tree.
The research journal forecasts that the distribution of Joshua trees will dwindle if temperatures continue to increase at its current rate.
A park ranger on a guided tour in the National Park explained that Joshua trees require very specific conditions to grow — regular chilly seasons and a bit of precipitation.
Barrows said that when the solar energy industry dredges land to make way for energy field farms, it undermines the sustainability of the ecosystem for the trees.
In the noble pursuit to become less reliant on fossil fuels — which are the leading cause of global climate change — Barrows speculates, that the solar energy companies should be “on the same team,” when it comes to protecting the earth’s ecosystems.
Instead of using desert space for solar farms, Barrows would prefer for companies like Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric to use the rooftops of department stores and factories.
Barrows expressed understanding of utilities' financial challenges. “These utilities that are supposed to support the public good are fighting tooth and nail to make sure they can still have a business,” Barrows said. “From a financial standpoint – from a pocketbook standpoint – it makes sense. From an ecological standpoint, it makes no sense at all.”
“Deserts are amazing places because by most human standards, no life should exist here at all,” he continued. “They assume that it’s a hot, dry place where nothing can live. Therefore we can drive our motorcycles up and down the hillsides, and we can build solar plants over the landscape and we’re not hurting biodiversity. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.”
A hiking trail leads to a dried up dam in the middle of the desert.
An illustrious sunset accents the Joshua Tree National Park skyline.
Creosote bushes create a network of roots that store water underground.
Xarene Eskandar calls Kolur to her for a quick desert photoshoot.
A German shepherd named Kolur bounds through sand dune trails, weaving in and out of the creosote bushes, occasionally stopping to sniff scraggly roots. His owner, Dr. Xarene Eskandar, keeps her own pace on the trail, calling him back if he wanders too far.
Loud, biting gusts of wind blow through the air tossing Eskandar’s dark, curly hair to and fro as she advances in her cream-colored coat and tight leggings tucked into cowboy boots.
Eskandar lives almost 25 miles northeast of Joshua Tree National Park. Here, the softer soil cannot support the Joshuas. Instead, in the Eskandar’s own backyard, a vast area of creosote bushes disperses over the dirt expanse. The shrubs look like tumbleweeds anchored in place to a visitor’s untrained eye. But Eskandar encourages outsiders to look closer. Creosote bushes establish a network of roots that store water underground.
She’s an artist, photographer and tech whiz who has a Ph.D. in Media Arts and Technology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. In 2018, she founded an artificial intelligence company focused on sustainable energy development.
“What no one realizes with the desert is that what we’re walking on is a network of underground rivers and aquifers,” said Eskandar. “What we’re doing is walking through an ancient forest.”
Just like the Joshua trees, the creosotes hold water in their roots and they’re old — really old. The eldest ring of bushes in the Mojave desert, the King Clone, which is several miles from Eskandar’s home, is believed to be over 10,000 years old, making it one of the oldest living organisms on earth. Eskandar’s house is surrounded by century-old shrubs.
Just like the Joshua Trees, the creosotes are threatened by climate change. A 2021 University of California, Irvine study found a 35% decrease in vegetation cover since the 1980s, which coincided with steadily increasing heat and dryness.
Eskandar practices the Zoroastrian religion, leading her life by “good deeds” and “good thoughts” — especially when it comes to care for the environment. She feels a spiritual connection to the desert. As humans, she said, we have a responsibility to nature – to keep it healthy and to make sure the creatures below the surface have access to water.
Eskandar considers the trees and the lizards in the bushes her neighbors. “We all have a right to this planet,” she said with gumption. “Every living being has a right to this planet.”
Eskandar frowns on her human neighbors who leave trash in the sand dunes.
During Kolur’s walk, she stops to collect discarded halves of cardboard boxes to take to the dump.
As she hikes along the paved trail with Kolur at her heels, a grey pickup truck barrels through the off-road sand dunes. Seeing the wheels kick up dust, Eskandar changes her pace, glaring in the vehicle’s direction and begins chasing after it — phone in hand.
She dials local law enforcement to report the driver, who she believes is one of her own neighbors who has a habit of littering. Eskandar calls him a “vandal” and has reported him three times while living in Twentynine Palms.
On the heels of a U.S. presidential administration that is currently pushing to privatize many protected lands, Eskandar urges people to call their local representatives and senators and insist on the continued protection of such areas.
Davis, the creator of the energy twirlers, shares Eskandar’s frustrations about changing federal policies and land developers.
“They have no respect for the desert,” she said. “All they care about is making money.”
For more respectful people, Davis has some simple suggestions. “Don’t play really loud music. Don’t take your four-wheel drive and plow through the desert. Don’t throw your trash. Don’t start fires. Just be quiet,” she said.
As for the “special energy” in the desert, Barrows believes that beyond the need to protect the biodiversity of the land, the solitude of the desert is worth preserving.
“You can listen to some shrink tell you what you should or shouldn’t do all the time, and it may or may not work – I have no idea,” Barrows said. “But I do know that when we’re in nature… whether it’s creosote bushes or Joshua trees or redwood trees or whatever — there is a feeling of calm and a feeling of health and well-being that you don’t get if you’re sitting in your house.”
Kolur, the German shephard, takes a walk among the creosote bushes.
