Horny Animals at the Joshua Tree National Park

Djeline calls them white butts. To me they look like horny goats. 

"They are called big horn sheep!" RN rebuked like he'd written the Joshua Tree National Park brochure himself.  

"Aren't they called anza borrego?" I thought I read somewhere that the Anza Borrego Desert Park is named after horny goats.

The reason why I signed up for the San Diego Photography Collective meet up was because it's going at a place called Wonder Valley at JTNP. The meet up group was there to photograph what used to be homesteads. I expected wandering through the ruins of what used to be a rustic community. I was thinking of Bodie, a ghost town in the eastern Sierra Nevada area. I think of a homestead as a tenant's make believe ranch. The The Homestead Act in the US gives farmers and settlers the right build their homes on public domains and till the land for their subsistence. I first heard about homesteads from a Filipino who planted fruit bearing trees and vegetable shrubs beyond his backyard fence in a public area close to hiking trails. It was then that I thought of homesteading as squatting, a landless tenant's only way to have a home in the Philippines and but it's illegal. 

The thought of homesteaders being the same as squatters in the Philippines reminded me of my Third World origins. I really didn't care about seeing the last functional glass outhouse in then US. A toilet outside a house would be the last place  I would like to go to even if I want to shit and piss during the night. So I  mustered enough courage to go to Diana and tell her that I am breaking away from the group to look for big horn sheep, my horny goats and Djeline's white butts. I couldn't tell Diana that I have seen enough squatters and outhouses in my lifetime and that I have lived in more dilapidated and squalid versions of the abandoned homesteads that she wanted the group to photograph. 

I was hugging a Joshua tree not because I was so happy to break away  from the group photographing dilapidated outhouses but because I am finally at the Joshua Tree National Park. Joshua tree, the least huggable of all trees, is named after the biblical character Joshua. Joshua with his outstretched hand upward to the sky in prayer appeared to Mormon settlers crossing the Mojave Desert in the mid 19th century in the image of a tree. Nowadays, outstretched hands upward to the sky while driving could mean a brewing road rage incident. Road rage tree! And this thorny plant is not even a tree. It is a specie of the palm-like yucca plant,  notable for its sword-like leaves and ornamental purposes. 

The park constitutes more than a half to nearly a million acres of wilderness offering visitors sights of endangered desert animals and a showcase of exhibits. 

"Ex see bit, 500 meters." I read the road sign aloud.

"Ex hib it!" RN corrected. 

The first "ex hib it" or item of interest, after hearing at the visitors center that the horny goats may not come out today because of the influx of visitors being a no entrance fee day because it was Veterans Day, is the skull rock. 

The other "ex hib it" I wanted to see was the arch rock.  The rock formations at the JNTP are  the most exquisite I have seen so far. The potato chip rock at the Mount Woodson summit is a mere silly cheap chip for college students hiking a strenuous 3-mile just to be photographed in acrobatic positions at the tip of the chip rock, compared to the rocks on "ex hib it" at JTNP.

This Arschloch (my new alias inspired by the arch rock) hadn't given up on seeing horny goats,  just yet! Navigating with the park map while RN drove, I made RN go through the Big Horn Pass, an unpaved road connecting to the Barker Dam. I scanned the passing landscape which seemed to have the most lush vegetation in the entire part park, hoping to see the horny ones. 

Lo and behold, the horny ones from a distance! A flock of Glorious Holy Shit!

"Now we can go to heaven when we die because we have seen the big horn sheep!" RN mused. 

We stopped in the middle of the unpaved road and spent some time taking pictures  of the horny ones who paused and stared back at us before they went back to their grazing. It was then that I realized that another vehicle was behind us just waiting and probably wondering why we have stopped. RN motioned on the grazing herd and it was only then that the driver and the passengers took notice of the horny animals and took their cameras out themselves. 

RN rarely posts anything on Facebook but he posted the above photo with a caption reminiscent of his  New York Times news desk editorial writing job:

" They're very elusive when humans are near, according to park rangers, and today, Veteran's Day with free admission to the park, there were even more people for them to avoid. Yet, a herd of about 12 to 15 of these magnificent creatures thundered across the road not 150-200 yards ahead of us, and then casually inspected us from the opposite hillside before disappearing among the desert landscape."