Pinyon, Joshua Trees, and the Desert Tortoise
Near Ridgecrest, California
The land around Ridgecrest is not empty, though it can look that way from the highway. This is one of the great meeting points of two deserts, where the Mojave from the south blends into the Great Basin from the north. That mixing gives the country a layered look.
Down on the valley floors and washes grows the creosote bush, spaced out in that classic Mojave polka dot pattern. Climb the bajadas and you meet the Joshua tree, the shaggy armed yucca that signals the Mojave. Higher still, in the surrounding mountain ranges, the slopes turn to woodlands of singleleaf pinyon pine and Utah juniper.
That pinyon nut was a staple food for the Native peoples who gathered it every fall. The animals here are just as tough. The desert tortoise, a threatened species that can live past fifty years and go a year without drinking, digs its burrows in these hills, alongside desert bighorn sheep and the rare Mohave ground squirrel.
Right at the edge of town, the Rademacher Hills offer a network of trails through this rolling scrub, an easy place to step out of the car and feel the real texture of the upper Mojave.
