It was just before Valentine’s Day 2026 as I was mulling over all the amorous words I might soon bestow on my beloved partner in life and best friend forever. Fortuitously both happen to be the same person, my wife Carol. Suddenly the spell was broken - I had a flashback to a particularly fraught episode in our lives! Where did that memory come from and why now? It concerned consuming bugs and a solemn promise I made about gasoline.
You must be thinking - WHAT/WHY! Or thinking, rather than bugs, what mushrooms is this guy eating. Not to keep you in the dark about my gastronomic pica for arthropods and ‘The Promise’, here’s the prequel.
Our destination was Joshua Tree National Park, a junction point of the Mojave and Colorado deserts in southeastern California. The park is vast, with a barren moon-like landscape covering almost a million acres. It rests among the top tier of our largest national parks. Once inside, there’s no cell service, no fuel, no food, nor any other amenity. You enter and you are on your own.
Foolishly, and a bit lazily I assumed Joshua Tree would be like Acadia, a park we previously visited, one rubbing shoulders with our smaller parks - easy in, easy out, and close to civilization.
Turns out it wasn’t, not by a long shot.
Before setting out for our thirty minute plus highway drive to Joshua Tree, Carol asked if we had enough gas. The fuel gauge of our rented Jeep was close to half full. Even with the Jeep’s non stellar fuel economy, figuring on a seventy mile round trip, I confidently responded, “no problem, more than enough”.“But there’s a station right here, why not do it now?” she replied. Carol is typically right 98% of the time and I’m usually wrong the other 2% yet somehow I keep forgetting that. So much to her chagrin, off we went without fueling up.
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| Carol and the Wrangler |
Soon while cruising to the park on Interstate 10, I felt a slight chill as the fuel gauge started dropping to ‘E” much faster than expected. Not having done my homework, I didn’t know about Joshua Tree’s, ‘once you enter, you are on your own’ admonition. Not to be deterred, I soldiered on thinking, ‘worse comes to worse, I could get directly to the north entrance, fill up outside the park, then resume our planned in-the-park itinerary. Of course I also didn’t know that once in, the north gateway still remained an hour away.
That’s when I recalled learning about desert survival skills and bugs.
In an earlier journey Carol and I were in Israel on a water mission learning about Israel’s magic with water.
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| In the Negev Desert |
Among those feats was converting seawater into potable H2O with a surplus sufficient for export to neighboring states. Gray and recycled water irrigated crops and literally made the desert bloom. Given the harsh terrain, that was miraculous.
One morning while still in the Negev desert region, we opted to take a sunrise ride to a nearby natural wonder - the immense 40 km long Ramon Crater. Omar was our guide and driver. Bouncing along in his jeep, which had plenty of gas, Omar recalled the desert survival course of his IDF service.
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| Omar is in the middle |
It was an eye opener to learn that if stranded and out of supplies, soldiers were supposed to seek out and eat bugs for their protein content and NOT eat green vegetation.
Q: Why, aren’t greens good for you?
A: Since some plants are poisonous, even if consuming won’t kill you, you’ll get sick, perhaps violently and then compromised.
Now back to Joshua Tree, and well into the park’s no man’s land.
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| Joshua Tree Desert and thinking the worse case scenario |
My gut was now officially in a tight square knot, it was decision time. I pulled over to a culvert, stopped and turned to Carol who was visibly not a happy camper. Guilty as charged for passing up fueling fiascos, I took a knee and begged forgiveness. Then I solemnly made ‘The Promise’ - “When you tell me to fill up, I will!”
In my mind I was thinking about my friend Kevin who once mentioned, “When I turned 50, I never passed a men’s room without paying a visit”.
I would now apply that crisis avoidance approach to gas stations whenever Carol recommends fueling up sooner than later.
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| Not all men’s rooms have such interesting decor |
With my flashback of the desert drama over, I refocused and finished composing my Valentine’s Day words, then looked forward to soon going out for a romantic dinner. Fuel would not be a concern as the restaurant was just a short walk away.
