This last weekend I had a retreat with the Knights, a group designed to help foster service and intentional community. It was a time to focus our energies and develop a strategy for the future. We also spent some time in solitude and small group kinds of discussions. Phil has posted a full collection of these pictures on his blog.

The real joy of the trip for me, though, was getting the heck out of the city again. It was an adventure to get there, and it was full of sublime beauty when we saw it.



The plan for the way out was to set up camp before dark came. Unfortunately, the earliest we could leave was 3:00. By leaving at 3, we hoped to make the 2 and a half hour drive with just enough time left to spare to set up a tent and get a fire going for the dark hours. Besides, where we were going was on dirt roads that I hadn't been on in years. This was not a trip to an established campsite somewhere with running water and bathrooms, but a journey to uninhabited wastes without any luxuries. We were going to rough it, and finding our campsite was going to be tough if we couldn't see where we were going.

A couple of things happened that shook all that up, though. First, it rained. Friday afternoon it began to rain in buckets, and while it tapered off as the day drew on, the freeways felt the angst of the dark weather. The other unplanned eventuality was Spring Break. Ours is next week, and it hadn't occured to me that every one else had it at a different time than us. Apparently enough people did, because we didn't get to camp 'till 9. And that means we didn't get to the dirt roads until it was very dark, and we wound our way through sand and mud to get there hesitantly. I was driving my dad's truck, but the other car was just a sedan, and sometimes it was a bit dicey getting it through the wet sand. But we made it fine and hastened to establish our camp in the cold drizzle. We lit our fire and gathered around it until around 10, and then went to bed.

The morning brought with it a shock. I sat up to look out on green plains stretching in every direction. This year's heavy rains covered the desert in green and flowers. I had never seen so much green in the desert before. There were little succulent green plants everywhere, temporarily filling the gaps between scrubby bushes and tumbleweed. In a few months, it will all be brown again, but right now it is full of life.



The other neat feature of this part of the desert was all lava field we were camped in. The hardened black outcroppings contrasted sharply with the soft green life, and in doing so really made it more beautiful. It's as if they were complementary colors. Oh, and the lava was not eroded so much that you couldn't still see the ancient swirls and ripples in its surface. You really had the sense, sometimes, of walking around on top of ancient rivers, and our imaginations jumped to imagine the times when the desert was filled with fire.



Another natural blessing of the trip was that it stopped raining Friday night, and so we enjoyed pleasant weather for all of Saturday and Sunday. The wind picked up Saturday night, but it still beat the rain. Unfortunately, we had planned on rain, and so we all got pretty sunburned.

To find where we camped, you take the 15 North to the 40 East. You get off of the 40 onto the 66 somewhere before you've gone 30 miles, and there are only a few places you can do this. I think the best one is Hector Road, because it takes you the furthest. About 32 miles from Barstow, you come to a road heading South following three rows of large utility towers. Driving along them, eventually you come to flat places in the lava where you camp. On the right of you, as you head south on the dirt road, is the Hector Mine, and to the left is 29 Palms Marine Base.