NY Times on Joshua Tree, California...
The new pilgrims, many of them commuters from Los Angeles and New York, include the artist Ed Ruscha, who has a house near Pioneer Town, a stage set for westerns with its own O.K. Corral; the New York photographer Jack Pierson; and Blake Simpson, a young Los Angeles furniture designer who is building a compound with a Quonset hut and a 1951 trailer. They are lured not by the night life, which consists largely of Pint Nights at the local cafe, but by what the 37-year-old Mr. Simpson calls "a fascination with stillness."
When I lived in LA, I'd travel to JT every few months (it's only 2-3 hrs away!) and I'd always drive in late on a Friday night via the South entrance. I never made reservations at the campgrounds because it was too tedious and you never knew if you'd end up next to a bunch of rowdy drunks playing bad music until late. So I'd drive off one of the main dirt roads, throw the truck into 4WD, and make sure I was off the National Park land and on the Bureau of Land Managment land. The BLM Land is less regulated and you can camp off the side of the road easily. To be able to be so far removed from civilization merely a few hours outside of the 2nd largest city in the nation is truly wonderful. The inky blackness of the night, the brilliant stars and Milky Way is also amazing out there. But the best part is waking up the next morning, usually because of the heat, and experiencing that "stillness"- where nothing is moving for as far as the eye can see. It's a magical place.
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