The Long Way Up Stockton Hill
There is a road out of Kingman that most people only use to get somewhere else. Stockton Hill runs north out of town, past the last of the houses and the last of the streetlights, and then it just goes, straight and patient, up toward Dolan Springs and the Joshua trees.I took it Sunday evening with no plan beyond seeing how far the light would hold. The town quits all at once out that way. One minute there are mailboxes and a feed store, the next there is nothing but creosote and the road running out ahead of you like somebody unrolled it and forgot to come back for it.The Joshua trees start about fifteen miles up. People call it a forest and it does not look like one at first, just a few of them standing off at odd angles like they wandered out and got lost. Then there are a hundred. Then...