MORNING AT THE OASIS: A Joshua Desert Retreats rental house.

Desert Retreat

A weekend escape to Joshua Tree is all about Zen. Renting your own quirky house makes that a whole lot easier to attain.

By Corey Scholibo
Published on May 06, 2010
Style Section L.A.

Joshua Tree has always had a strange power. It’s the desert that Graham Parsons drove out into one dark night and ended his life, the arid expanse that U2 decided to name their 1987 album about their tumultuous relationship with the U.S. after, and it has long been a wayward destination for artists. Drawn by the low cost of living (you can still buy a home there for under $100,000), musicians, painters and sculptors have made Joshua their home, attracting drawn travelers interested in their art.

The only problem with Joshua Tree is where to stay. If you’re not interested in camping, your only options have been delightful 29 Palms Inn or the various motels that litter 29 Palms Highway. But I’ve recently found alternative lodging: Joshua Desert Retreats. A collection of 12 homes just north of the national park, Joshua Desert Retreats started 10 years ago with two homes. Each property is situated on its own five acres of land (in 1938 Congress passed the Homestead Act, giving allotting parcels to anyone willing to build a home in order to populate federal lands in the area). With quirky names like the Zen-Go, the Jackalope and the Oasis, each home has its own distinct identity.

The Godwin Ranch house, for instance, sleeps up to six and has an enormous swinging bed suspended from an external structure that I lounged in half asleep as the sun was setting. Todos Santos is decorated like a Mexican hacienda and has a library, and Zen-Go is red with Japanese day beds and Asian art. I spent the weekend in the Adobe, a one-room cabin with attached sun porch.

Escaping to the desert is a regular requirement of mine, to get away from Los Angeles and go somewhere almost impossibly quiet to regain my thoughts. From the second I arrived I couldn’t get the word charming out of my head. My cabin featured a pot belly stove to heat the attached patio, a hammock, an external porch made entirely of huge slabs of slate stone filled in with desert grasses, and even an outdoor grill in the shape of a pig. Outside, the bathroom was a white porcelain tub with rain shower head for a mid-day cool off.

Each property comes with a fully equipped kitchen, so you need only bring your own food—a wise idea, as you are miles from a store or a decent restaurant. At night I slipped out into the hot tub that each cabin shares with one other home next door to skinny dip under the stars—each pair shares a pool as well. Retiring to my sunken living room, I started a fire and read with the sounds of the desert winds as my background. The cabins have all the modern amenities, even iPod docks and DVD players, though strangely they do not have wifi.

You don’t come for technology though: You come for sweeping views and the energy of the desert. Writers have rented these cabins for several months at a time to work. My friend local filmmaker Jessica Hundley told me she used one of the homes to shoot a scene from a film. Nightly, weekly and extended stays can be arranged with Greg Davis, the co-owner of the property, who is more than willing to talk to you about local, little-known destinations. His [business] partner is John Koenigsberg, whose father was the K in the powerful entertainment PR firm PMK/BNC.

My first night there, without the distractions of our city, I went to bed at 8pm. After a deep and restorative sleep I awoke and went outside to find a bird had been killed and eaten on my front step — by what I don’t know, leaving only the feathers and feet. I called my boyfriend and nervously asked if it was a bad sign. “No,” he said. “It’s an offering.”

Joshua Desert Retreats, 310.678.0552, www.JoshuaDesertRetreats.com