Homage to La Contenta
(2/15/25) What is any temporary place you live? All the more so when a week or two stretches beyond a month? The place on La Contenta on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park in the Yucca Valley rapidly became our home in the desert. We were lucky to land there a week after the fires and find our wits inside the ringing silence, big sunny windows, and 360 views of San Jacinto to the west and the park to the south and east, and the glimmer of lights along the highway to the north. We made a fast handful of local friends. And witnessed a desert snow!
Oddly, the floor plan in relation to the sun mirrored our place on Pine. Odder still, we realized not long after arriving that we’d bumbled our incidental way to a nearby sandy sholl of the desert in mid-August, 2023, a few days after I arrived in California to peep on the Perseid meteor shower. Underwhelmed by the glut of cars and people in the park nearby when we arrived in the dark, we opted to venture off the beaten asphalt path and onto a network of sandy dirt roads. One road led us to a small ledge of sorts on the edge of a steep arroyo. We pulled out our rugs and slept the night here. Before departing California in mid-February, 2025, we walked to that place and discovered our latest ‘home’ was already within view, about a half-mile from away from the campsite we fell upon in the dark.
We stayed in the Space House (Thunderbird Lodge Retreat), thus the crashed UAP/UFO you may see littered around the house, along with homemade metalwork robots, vacant trailer, and apparent X-Files set-pieces. & other odd miscellany (a busted bowling ball?) within chucking distance. There was a certified abundance of chairs. An abandoned house nearby, as well as several occupied ones which made it all less creepy. It took us about two weeks to make the place feel homey: we rearranged the interior chairs, covered the alien-heads, aired out the place, and forgave the ghostly presence lurking in the shower.
Our thanks to Lori for having us there! We hope to return again...
