Reflecting on Five Years of Desert Living

A little over three years ago we sat down to reflect on our first couple of years of full-time desert living. The past few years have flown by, and suddenly we’ve been living in the desert for over five years. That milestone is the perfect reminder to sit down and reflect on the changes of the past few years, and what still holds true.

First, we’ll do a quick recap of why we moved to the desert in the first place. Back in 2014, we went on a cross-country road trip that forever changed us. We were doing freelance design work while on the road, and would zoom in on google maps each day to find a new landscape to explore in between working on projects. Along that trip, we gravitated most towards the deserts that we visited. Joshua Tree National Park especially stood out, and we couldn’t stop thinking about it. After a year of dreaming and searching for a house of our own, we found The Joshua Tree House listed on Craigslist of all places. Even though the photos were tiny, we somehow knew it was the one even before seeing it in person.

In 2015 we spent half the year living in Joshua Tree renovating that house, but in early 2016 we made the move full-time. We found that we dreaded leaving the desert to go back to the city (which was San Francisco for us at the time), and we were working freelance which meant we didn’t need to physically be in SF. It felt so difficult to make the decision to leave (we knew we would be priced out once we left our rent controlled apartment) but we followed our instincts and made the change. Not only has life in the desert been more affordable for us, we’ve loved spending more time outside connecting with nature and have felt full creative freedom here to create and grow The JTH. It still holds true that this quiet and remote place creatively fills us up.

Our Pace of Life

As we mentioned in our two year reflection, life here doesn’t necessarily mean that we do less. In fact, we do more and create more than we ever did before… but what has changed is how we do things. Each moment is slowed down to appreciate moments we had always considered to be “ordinary”. Finding happiness in each routine moment rather than waiting for something grand to happen has really stood out as a shift in our mentality from city life to rural living. We cook at home more often, we spend more time on hiking trails and around campfires, and we create our own entertainment.

We’ve personally found that our experience of desert living has had many parallels with the past year we’ve all been living (through the COVID pandemic). The pandemic re-emphasized many elements of our life here, including how much stronger we find ourselves to be after difficult times.

The cacti constantly remind us that beauty and strength are symbiotic. The native plants around us survive intense conditions throughout the year, and still manage to thrive by producing delicate spring blooms each year.

So much of the beauty and lessons in the plants and animals around us is in their grit. Each small yet impressive creature of the desert has what it takes to survive high temperatures with very little water access. There is so much fear built up around snakes, scorpions, spiders etc—the presence of most desert creatures is commanding. We have so much respect for them. From time to time a rattlesnake gets too close to our house, so we relocate them to another spot within a mile or so (if they are relocated too far away they will die attempting to return to their original territory). We’ve grown accustomed to an event like this throwing off our plans for the day, a constant reminder to be flexible.

Wildlife

We absolutely love having the local wildlife as our neighbors. In Joshua Tree we typically see coyotes, rabbits, hummingbirds, lizards, desert tortoises, doves, ravens, snakes, and even an occasional bobcat. Tucson has many of the same animals with a few additional ones like javelinas, mule deer, owls, and ring-tailed cats. We get a lot of questions about snakes, spiders, and scorpions—some of the wildlife that has more fear built up around it.

What we’ve learned is that oftentimes the appearance of an animal is its defense mechanism. For example, we think of tarantulas like the tortoises of spiders. They’re nearly blind and slow, yet there is so much fear built around them. They need to look scary as part of their defense. We find this with snakes too. Unless they feel threatened (an aggressive approach or grabbing) they would rather not waste their energy or venom on you. It’s purely defense.

On Loneliness

In our two year update we mentioned that we didn’t feel lonely at all. Before the pandemic started, we found that we were getting even more quality time in with friends and family who would come to stay with us for a week or so at a time. We also felt constantly stimulated by the markets and shows that happen year round—there was always something going on. Of course since that update Covid changed things quite a bit and our life became more so what it seems people always imagined: a little more quiet, and a little more lonely. We collectively experienced this through the pandemic, unable to see our family, host dinner parties, or attend markets and shows etc.

This past year in particular has really tested our ability to create our own entertainment. While in some ways it’s been the reset we needed, we are very ready to connect with our community again and find those deeper connections as we did pre-pandemic.

Community

The pandemic has encouraged many people to buy land out in the desert, and move rurally. It’s exciting to see some new small businesses like shops and restaurants in the works by talented folks who otherwise may not have had the push they needed to move rurally—it gets us excited to see this small community grow and create! On the other hand, we’ve also seen a lot of people buying property out in Joshua Tree as an “investment” without a love and respect for the land. This part honestly bums us out. We hope that new desert property owners see themselves as stewards of the land, and support local efforts to preserve the wide open spaces like Mojave Desert Land Trust and the Desert Museum.

Lately we’ve been seeing bumper stickers around town that read “Go Back to LA”, which we personally hate to see. Anyone who loves and respects this place can and should be a welcome member of the community whether or not they grew up here. The concept that someone had to be born here to be a true resident feels elitist. Maybe those bumper stickers should simply say “Respect the Desert”.

Renovating Rurally

The bulk of the past five years we have spent doing some sort of renovation. We actually spent about half of that time living in the renovations which meant many bucket showers and peeing in the desert (sorry if that’s TMI). While we’re feeling done with living in renovations, we love bringing old spaces back to life and fully intend on continuing that. We love designing spaces and thinking about how they can transform someone’s experience. Right now we’re working on bringing this original homestead cabin from the ’50’s back to life.

In the beginning we were doing most of the renovation work ourselves learning as we went, but with each project we’ve been able to hire out more help (which is great because we progressively get more and more tired haha). When we renovated the Posada (our inn in Tucson, AZ) we hired out quite a bit of the work because we were on a tight timeline with our loans and needed to get things up and running as quickly as possible. While renovating rurally is not exactly convenient or easy, it’s so satisfying to bring neglected spaces back to life (the inn was abandoned for 10 years before we began working on it!)

What’s Next

What we know deep down is that we love creating spaces for people to reflect, reset, and create in. We’ve been feeling the urge lately to work on our next location as our dream is to create a series of JTH locations that could be experienced individually or connected as a road-trip. While sometimes our life feels frantic, we want to step back and make sure that everything we do is done slowly and thoughtfully. Just like life in the desert, what we create here may take more time but will bloom when it’s ready.