Sadly, there is one photo op that I missed:
When I was a kid, my family would take a vacation every summer -- a couple weeks "out in nature" with a trailer and, for us kids, a tent and such. Back then I did some shooting with a Brownie box camera and then eventually got away from it.
Anyway, one summer we were in Joshua Tree, a national park in the "high desert" of Southern California, a picturesque place that we were fond of visiting (in fact my sister and I decided to scatter my Mom's ashes there after she passed away a few years ago).
Anyway, on day we were making a visit to check out part of the park we were interested in seeing. At some point I decided to go off on my own exploring the various things you can see wandering around that part of the desert.
I came upon a huge boulder -- they are all over the place there, so there was nothing "special about it. So, I just casually walked around it, and then I noticed at the base at one point there was a little opening, some kind of hole that just went into the darkness. Who knew what was in there? The thoughts of little nasty critters did flick through my mine, such as rattlesnakes or scorpions, both of which in that area would be real possibilities.
But I decided to shrug those concerns off -- I got down on my stomach and began to crawl into the little hole. And, once I had gotten a bit in, my body cut off all light. Oh well, I just kept working my way forward...
Until, a few feet in, all of a sudden I could "feel" this hole opening up. Well, that was interesting, so on I went until I was through the narrow "crawl space"...
And then, once I was through, light could come in, and once my eyes adjusted (nice Auto apertures we have) I realized that I was in a cave the size of a room, not large but still functional.
And, I saw that all the surface of the cave, not just around the sides but the ceiling as well, was covered, really thoroughly covered, with heirographs, drawings that had been left there by some Native Americans at some point in the distant past! And, because of the remoteness and because of the barely noticeable "entry way", there was no signs of any human having been in that "room" since, well, since whatever hunting party of whatever had been there, who knows how many years ago. No cigarrette butts, no pop-tops, not even a footprint could be seen...
I grabbed my family and showed them, and then as we were back up on the road ready to drive back to camp, we encountered a park ranger. When we told him, he just acted uninterested and said there was "a lot of that type of thing around". Well, wow. Yeah you can see "signs" of activity around, but I had never before or since seen something so pristine.
It was maybe 35 years before I made it back to Joshua Tree, this time with a camera. I headed over to the little area that we had been to so long ago, and I took off and scoured that area for that particular boulder with the little crawl space so that again I could ignore the risk of critters, and this time could get some amazing photos...
But, over the decades, the passage of time and many windy days, the destert sands had "bult up" around the many various boulders, and covered my little hole in whichever boulder contained my "special place"...dang...
So, none of the "special" photos I had longed for. In the vicinity of the boulder, but in a little valley area, I got this (note the tiny rock climbers), taken with a little film camera (this was back in the '90s):
And with the same film camera I also got this:
And then, just a few years ago, like I said earlier we came to scatter my Mom's ashes, which itself was a feat, we needed to climb a rocky hill in 110-degree (F) heat to catch a little breeze, and boy, that in itself was rough. But I did get some photos
!
So, in the middle of our very hot and tiring climb up the rocky hills I got this of a niece:
So, all is not lost, the desert is a great place to explore with a camera!
