There’s something sacred about the desert at night, especially in Joshua Tree National Park. I remember lying flat on my back beneath a blanket of stars, the ground still warm from the day, surrounded by the unique silhouettes of those twisted, stubborn trees. The air was motionless. No traffic. No voices. Just space. It’s one of my favorite parks for that reason—the raw beauty, the almost alien terrain, and the way the sky doesn’t just show up at night, it takes over. Out there, far from city glow and noise, you don’t just realize how small you are: you just feel it. And somehow, that makes the world feel bigger.
I had been to Joshua Tree before, but the first trip where I really spent time inside the park—thirteen or fourteen years ago—stuck with me. It felt enchanted in a quiet, unannounced way. Nothing flashy. Just this steady pull, like the land was asking me to slow down and pay attention. Years later, I came back again while working on a music video for my song Midnight Train, moving through the park with cameras and gear, trying to capture something I wasn’t sure could actually be captured.
But it was during the Madman and the Poet tour in 2016 that Joshua Tree really etched itself into me. The entire band stopped there and spent three full days in the park. Late one night, after a dinner at Pappy & Harriets, after everyone else had turned in, I drove the van out into the desert alone. I grabbed my acoustic guitar, laid down on the Mojave floor, and let the sky do what it does out there. I strummed. I sang quietly. I wrote a little. Mostly, I stared. I don’t think I’d ever seen a sky like that before—not one that felt so endless and so close at the same time. Something shifted in me that night.
Joshua Tree is one of the places in the United States with the least amount of light pollution, and it changes everything. Stars don’t twinkle out there—they hang. They stay. I can still remember the feel of rocks and dirt pressing into my back as I cradled my guitar, the silence so complete it almost rang. I felt impossibly small. Insignificant, even. And yet, strangely, I felt like I belonged—like I was stitched into that sky and dirt and silence in a way I hadn’t been before.
That’s what Joshua Tree does. It doesn’t overwhelm you. It humbles you. It strips things down until all that’s left is you, the night, and the reminder that wonder still exists if you’re willing to lie still long enough to see it.
