When Grief Sent Me to the Desert: Finding Healing Through Joshua Tree

Two months after my wife passed away, I found myself standing in the middle of the most spectacular wildflower bloom in Joshua Tree’s recorded history. I was 45, newly widowed, and had no idea how to handle the grief that felt like it might swallow me whole the memoir hub.

I could have turned to medication. I could have sat in my chair and given up. Instead, something pulled me toward the desert, the same desert where my father used to take me as a boy, the only place I ever saw him as a good person.

I tell this story because it’s the clearest example I have of what I look for in every memoir I write: the stretch of a life when the person had no idea how it would turn out. Readers stay for that stretch, and most people want to leave it out of their own story.

What did the desert teach about hope after loss?

The desert was carpeted with flowers from the Colorado River to the sea. Purple lupines, orange poppies, and yellow desert marigolds painted the landscape in colors so vivid they seemed impossible. For the first time in months, I felt something other than crushing sadness. I felt wonder. For more, see the letters they never sent.

I packed my camera, filled my canteens, and started hiking. Trail after trail, weekend after weekend. I hiked in 105-degree heat, barely survived a flash flood when rain was pouring in the nearby mountains, even visited when it was snowing. I brought models out for photo shoots among the Joshua trees and rock formations. The wide open spaces let my consciousness expand, gave me room to reflect on our marriage and her place in my life. The geology pulled me in, ancient rocks telling stories of endurance across millions of years.

Sarah Al Nour dancing with finger cymbals beside the lake at Barker Dam in Joshua Tree National Park. Partway through the shoot, a park ranger rode up on a horse and told us that photography in the park requires a permit, about $300. He decided to let it slide that time. Copyright © Richard Lowe.

When does grief make solo hiking dangerous?

Heard elsewhere

Richard has talked elsewhere about why he treats grief as something to move away from, not sit with, and how photography became the way out, on Bet The Jockey.

After a dozen solo hikes, I discovered the Joshua Tree Association and joined them for a guided hike through the Wonderland of Rocks Wash. What I didn’t realize was that this wasn’t even a real trail, just an unmarked route following a dry streambed through massive boulder fields. The National Park doesn’t maintain it because it’s too dangerous.

I was tired, probably pushed myself too hard following that streambed through the maze of giant boulders, but I was determined to keep up.

Then I slipped on the shale cliff while trying to navigate around one of those towering rock walls.

It was pure instinct, grab the nearest thing or fall backwards down the rocks. That “nearest thing” happened to be a massive barrel cactus. Needles pierced my arm from wrist to elbow. But that wasn’t the worst part. When I came down hard, a long spine went completely through my hiking boot and foot.

The other hikers helped, though one woman let me know exactly what she thought about my attempting such a challenging route. Someone volunteered to help me navigate back through the boulder maze, but the tension was obvious. That day I learned something important about myself: I prefer hiking alone.

Grief makes people take chances they’d never take on an ordinary Saturday, and the desert doesn’t care why you’re out there. If you’re walking through a loss, tell somebody where you’re going and save the unmarked washes for a day when your head is clear.

How did family history shape the experience?

The desert held special meaning beyond its stark beauty. As a child, those rare camping trips with my father to Joshua Tree were the only times I saw him as a good person. Away from the pressures and disappointments that defined his daily life, he became someone I could connect with, patient, knowledgeable about the rocks and plants, present in a way he never was at home.

That’s what makes family stories so hard to write well. Plenty of people grew up with a parent who was two different people, and a memoir that shows only one of them shortchanges the reader and the parent.

Returning to that same landscape as an adult processing the deepest loss of my life, I felt his presence in unexpected ways. The geological formations he’d taught me to identify, the hidden springs he’d shown me, the particular quality of desert light at sunset, all of it became a bridge between my childhood memories and my adult grief.

Why hike every trail in the park?

Somewhere during that first year, I decided I was going to hike every single trail in Joshua Tree National Park. All 52 of them. It became an obsession that gave structure to what could have been aimless wandering.

Each trail offered different challenges, different rewards. The easy nature walks taught me to slow down and notice details. See also remembering my mother. The strenuous climbs pushed my physical limits. The unmarked routes through boulder fields tested my navigation and forced me to trust my instincts.

By the time I finished, I’d taken 7,935 photographs across those 52 hikes.

Another time I got off the path somehow. I turned around and there was no path, and I had no idea where the hell I was, only half a mile from the road. Finally I went totally quiet and waited about ten minutes until I heard a faint car in the distance. I followed the sound, and I was right. First I had to climb down a big ravine and back up, with rattlesnakes in it. For more on staying alive out there, see my book Real World Survival.

Every season, every weather condition, every possible angle of light and shadow. For more on grief and starting over, hear Richard on Adversity to Strength. Some of those photos were later featured in a published coffee table book about the Renaissance Faire in Irwindale. That began an eight-year photography career that would take me from desert landscapes to belly dancers, WWE wrestlers, and historical reenactments.

I went on to hike every national park in the Southwest except Death Valley. Not bad for a grieving 45-year-old who didn’t know if he’d survive the pain.

What Does the Desert Teach About Stories?

Hard to believe that was 20 years ago. These days, I work as a ghostwriter, helping others tell their own stories of resilience and transformation.

The connection between my healing and my current work isn’t coincidental. Those months in Joshua Tree taught me that our most powerful stories often emerge from our most difficult moments. The desert showed me how to endure discomfort, how to find beauty in harsh conditions, and how to document transformation as it happens.

Every client I work with is on their own version of a desert crossing.

The executive who survived a company bankruptcy doesn’t just understand crisis management in theory. They know it in their bones, the same way I know the feeling of being lost in a boulder field and finding my way out. The entrepreneur who built something from nothing doesn’t just talk about persistence. They embody it.

My job is to help them see that their struggles aren’t background noise to their success stories. my memoir process They’re the foundation of their authority and credibility.

I still return to Joshua Tree regularly. These days I go for remembrance. To honor the man I was at 45 who thought his life was over, and to celebrate the life that emerged from that apparent ending. The Joshua trees are still there, still growing slowly toward an ancient sky, still teaching anyone willing to listen that survival is just the beginning of the story.

What I can’t stand is watching people wait until they feel healed before they’ll tell their story. Plenty of them never feel finished, and by the time they’re ready, the details that made it worth telling have faded or the people who could confirm them are gone.

If you’ve been through something that shaped who you are, that’s a story worth telling.

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Buttercup
Grief after my wife’s death is also the subject of Buttercup, a memoir told by the cat who was paying the most attention during those years.