This was another hike on another gorgeous California Dreamin’ -type day. 

 The desert is so deceptive. At first, you look out the car window and it’s just dry dusty tumbleweed stuff like a cheap Western flick sans the cowboys.

And then. You start walking up the trail and start noticing the flowers and hear the crunch of dry rock underfoot and and the vistas get bigger, until pretty soon it feels like that world could open up forever.

It’s just so different from the West Coast forest trail that we hike here at home, where the wet mossy green-ness of it fills your retinas and the trees and ferns move in so close and thick and damp.

Instead, this desert leads the eyes into far-off possibilities. And then, when we got down into those palms the temperature dropped and the light softened  from crisp shadows to soft golden roundness and we gained the experiential understanding of the meaning of the word ‘oasis’. 

Later, we went to the visitor’s centre and walked the trail through McCallum Grove and into McCallum Pond. It boggles the mind to be surrounded by dust and sitting in the shady coolness of palms with fronds that  hang to the ground like an African hut.  I swear I could have parted those crackling palms and found whole families hidden within their depth. It was quite magic.

 These hikes are in the 13,000-acre Coachella Valley Preserve. Apparently the San Andreas Fault allows the water to seep up to the surface and nourish all these incredible fan palms.

The view from the Pushawalla Palm trail ridge overlooks the city sprawl of Palm Springs and the various other cities that all blend into each other, as well as the San Bernardino Mountains and Indio Hills.

A great help with all of this was the wonderful book I mentioned in my last post, “120 Great Hikes in and near Palm Springs.” Apparently, the later editon is titled 140 Great Hikes. They’re easy-to-follow directions with useful information as well.