Thanksgiving at The Joshua Tree House

Since we launched the Joshua Tree House on Airbnb, its been an amazing experience seeing the talent that passes through there. Our guest book is filling up with beautiful sketches from guests, and we get to see incredible images people are sharing of the house on Instagram. We get so much excitement out of seeing all of that, that we sometimes almost don’t want to interrupt that by staying there ourselves.

With a feeling that that might happen, we blocked off Thanksgiving on the calendar before we even listed it so that we could host family in the space we worked so hard to create. We hadn’t celebrated Thanksgiving for the last couple of years (we’ve used it as a travel day two years in a row), but this year we were feeling ready to sit still and reflect. Maybe this year Thanksgiving would actually be about feeling grateful.

To be honest, Thanksgiving has never been my favorite. While it’s supposed to be about being grateful for what we have, it often ends up being a wasteful holiday that only leaves me feeling full and sleepy on a couch staring at the tv with my family.

But this year was different. We adventured through the desert together, climbed boulders, practiced yoga, made macrame, and marveled at the sun and the stars.

I feel so grateful to have discovered a place that makes me feel so at ease, reminds me how small I am, and keeps me open to new ways of thinking.