Dispatch #5 - BLM Campgrounds In the Eastern Sierra
Plus A Mojave Road Trip, Book Launch News, and 8 Stunning Campgrounds
Good morning from a gravel pullout along California Highway 127, halfway between Shoshone and Death Valley Junction, smack dab in the middle of - you guessed it - BLM lands. I carried a camp chair out into a sea of creosote and parked myself with a journal, pencil, and camera. It’s a cool sixty-seven degrees, the sky drenched in blues and streaked with wispy egg white.
A few ravens circle overhead, wings outstretched, gliding on waves of wind barely perceptible here on the ground. If they flew east, they’d hit Nevada in under eight miles.
The ubiquitous creosotes are practically bursting with lemon-colored flowers and fuzzy white seed capsules. I run my fingers through the caterpillar-like follicles and pinch the resinous leaves until my hands are sanctified in scent by the holy bush.
I stopped here because directly to my north is Eagle Mountain — a solitary, jagged mass rising like an island eighteen hundred feet above the sandy Mojave floor. It’s an oddity in these parts, disconnected from any other range, a lonesome limestone figure seemingly misplaced. On topographic maps, its shape perfectly resembles an arrowhead. It’s also my favorite mountain in this vast desert, one I’ve contemplated and photographed from nearly every surrounding vantage point.
For the Southern Paiute and Western Shoshone, Eagle plays an important role in their creation stories and salt songs, a special “passage to the sky” through which bighorn sheep and other beings entered this earthly realm. Even with my limited understanding, it’s easy to sense its spiritual weight.
Between occasional trucks rumbling along the highway, all is quiet. I close my eyes, lift my head skyward, and inhale deeply, savoring the fresh Mojave Desert air.
It is soooooo good to be back.
Eighty-Seven Days To Launch
(not that anyone’s counting!)
Hard to believe, but there are only 87 days until my book comes into the world. Considering this journey began exactly 1,807 days ago, I'm beyond relieved to finally be down to double digits!
A flurry of podcast interviews are on the horizon, and the official book tour announcement is dropping very soon.
Meanwhile, the latest review just landed from Foreword Reviews:
"The Enduring Wild is Josh Jackson’s captivating portrayal of California wilderness under the Bureau of Land Management ... a breathtaking tribute to the threatened California public lands that many people overlook."
If you want to learn more about our underloved public lands, lose yourself in beautiful photos and illustrated maps, and reflect on big ideas ranging from reciprocity to wilderness to place attachment theory — I think you’ll love it. :)
You can PRE-ORDER here!
BLM Campgrounds In the Eastern Sierra:
One of the questions I hear most frequently from my Instagram community is whether there are actual campgrounds on BLM land.
It’s a great question because most people associate camping on BLM land with dispersed camping, the self-sufficient, rugged style usually done along roadside pullouts. Nearly all BLM land is open to this kind of camping, but I'll save those details for another newsletter.
But yes, there are hundreds of developed BLM campgrounds across the American West! And some of my absolute favorites are tucked in and along the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada, just a short detour off famed Highway 395.
So, let’s dive into my favorite Eastern Sierra BLM campgrounds — with images, links, descriptions, and a beautiful illustrated map from my book…
[Paywall note to free subscribers: Becoming a paid subscriber goes beyond unlocking every newsletter — think of me as your personal BLM travel guide, sharing deep-dive info on campgrounds, dispersed camping spots, scenic road trips, landscape highlights, and hidden gems along the way.]