Joshua Tree

According to an internal email, the National Park Service will be given congressional funding to retroactively pay for operational costs expended during the partial government shutdown.

Many national parks were kept open but unstaffed or understaffed, with serious consequences for the parks, their employees, and their visitors.

The number of visitors to Joshua Tree National Park has doubled in the past four years, an increase that spells trouble for local flora and fauna. But as tourism has increased, so have the numbers of conscious residents and conservation efforts.

Ken Layne's quarterly magazine, Desert Oracle, tries to give readers a sense of the profound solitude—and weirdness—of the Mojave Desert.