The air in Joshua Tree is sweet, thin and immaculate. It is high desert air at its finest. It is a forsaken landscape. The Joshua trees that line the horizon and the desert seem like lost souls trapped in a spinning chokehold, moving so fast that everything is brilliantly still and hopeful. Despite its alienness and despite its strangeness, it is a beautiful landscape full of boulders and small shacks and homesteads. In the summer, it is too hot to live here, so many people move North or somewhere more forgiving. When you wake up in Joshua Tree, you want to walk for miles until you are an invisible stranger. At night, have a shot of whiskey at Pappy + Harriet’s and in the morning eat at La Copine in Flamingo Heights - make sure to order the beignets, which are splattered devilishly with cinnamon-coffee sugar. Just two hours away from Los Angeles, Joshua Tree is a strange and beautiful oasis. text and photography by Oliver Maxwell Kupper