A young Filipina with us on our annual pilgrimage to Southern California, she was touring the famous Joshua Tree National Park when the sight of a Joshua Tree stopped her cold.
“May I pray under it?” she wondered.
“Of course,” my wife replied, “but why do you want to?”
“Because it’s in the Bible,” the young woman said. And so, we paused as she raised her arms to the blue heavens stretching out far above.
Which, not surprisingly, is how the prayerful tree got its name. According to local legend, Mormon settlers passing this way in the mid-1800s thought the tree’s outstretched limbs resembled the prophet Joshua beseeching God to help the ancient Israelites defeat the Kings of Gibeon. The Lord complied, the Bible says, helping the Hebrews win the battle and continue their march through the desert to The Promised Land.
Similarly, more than 3,000 years later, the enraptured Mormons continued their journey to a promised land of their own. And more recently our Filipino friend, inspired by the same tree, embarked on a new life in America.
Perhaps you see the pattern.
Indigenous to the Mojave Desert of California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizona, the jagged tree is plentiful throughout the national park just eight kilometers from our house in the small desert community bearing its name. For me, in fact, a main selling point of the property we purchased there a decade ago was that it hosted three of those oh-so-sacred trees.
One of them is gone now, annihilated, we are told, by climate change, drought, and the unpredictability of wildfires and desert storms. Which brings us to the point of this column; that the iconic Joshua Tree may be disappearing.
It “really is a death-by-a-thousand-cuts kind of situation,” one senior environmental scientist told the Los Angeles Times.
To save the trees—which have lifespans of up to 500 years—the State of California has adopted some extremely tough measures. Damaging, removing, or in any way interfering with a Joshua Tree is now a major offense. And if you have one in your backyard, well, any construction or digging within 15 meters of it requires a $60,000 (3.35 million peso) permit.
Which has sparked some backlash.
“I don’t believe that’s a good outcome,” Curtis Yakimow, town manager of Yucca Valley, a rural municipality next to the national park, recently declared. Among other things, his town suffers from a significant housing shortage demanding major new construction. “It doesn’t make any sense,” Yakimow said of the massively expensive restrictions. “This is a tremendous issue for our residents and homeowners.”
So what’s the solution?
Pardon my literary pretensions, but—given the Joshua Tree’s religious symbolism—I often think of its potential loss as a metaphor for one far more profound; the endangered connection between humanity and the larger spirit that informs us, however you choose to define it.
“The Joshua Tree stands as a testament to endurance,” declared Copilot—an artificial intelligence application—when asked about the famous tree’s spiritual significance. “Battered by the desert winds, it stretches towards the sky in defiance, much like the human spirit in search of meaning.”
An ostensibly human poet once put it somewhat similarly. “The Joshua Trees,” he wrote, “dance with the wind, whispering ancient secrets.”
So how to move forward on behalf of these inspiring natural survivors of the desert’s harsh conditions? Should we ruthlessly preserve those still standing regardless of the human cost, or simply plant new ones along the onward paths to which they inevitably lead us?
Perhaps only time will tell.
For now, though, here’s how another anonymous commentator once expressed his love for those praying plants. “Amongst the Joshua Trees,” he said, “I found my peace.”
And so may it be for us all. Hopefully, for a long time to come.
__________________
David Haldane is an award-winning American journalist, author, and radio broadcaster with homes in Surigao City, Philippines, and Joshua Tree, California. His latest book, Dark Skies: Tales of Turbulence in Paradise, is available on Amazon. This column appears weekly in The Manila Times.
