Leaving the city behind?

During the Spring Break I revisited a favorite place, Joshua Tree National Park in California’s Mojave Desert.  Not much urban about it, but interesting to consider how we city dwellers travel away from the city to this beautiful, natural place, but don’t quite leave the city behind.  I draw almost continuously on the way there (naturally I’m not the driver), and love observing how the landscape changes as we leave the city and enter the great expanses of the Mojave.  And then, arriving in the Park, you see towering masses of boulders that break the horizontal expanse of the desert.  I wasn’t the only one on Spring Break…on a fine, spring Sunday afternoon, the tallest rocks are crawling (literally) with climbers.  A particularly lovely area, Hidden Valley, has rocky edifices that are rock-climber magnets.  Climbers visit in droves with miles of rope and elegant climbing equipment.  I’m  content to scramble up a smallish rock for a perch from which to draw them, and listen to the shouts and hoots of climbers and crows.