![u2 the joshua tree poster u2 the joshua tree poster](https://dygtyjqp7pi0m.cloudfront.net/i/16658/16352498_1.jpg)
So I recognize its particular branches immediately, even lying on the ground, pale brown, decomposing. Heck, it's on a poster on my office wall right now. That tree was also on a poster in my bedroom growing up, and on another poster in my college dorm room. Joshua Tree was the first album I owned, and that tree was on the inside of the album artwork. and after a few football fields, there it is. A single tire track, perhaps from a motorbike, seems to mark a trail through what would otherwise be nondescript roadside desert. I walk southward from the road, and if I've got this right it'll only be a couple hundred yards.
![u2 the joshua tree poster u2 the joshua tree poster](https://i0.wp.com/chrisbartonart.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/U2-Main-Image-1.jpg)
I drive twenty-three miles east, until the coordinates tell me that it's time to abandon my car and finish the rest of the journey on foot.
![u2 the joshua tree poster u2 the joshua tree poster](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/QaYAAOSwmQNearj2/s-l300.jpg)
The 14 becomes the 395, and at the southern tip of Owens Lake a right turn takes me onto a road technically called 190, but around these parts the name doesn't much matter. I stop at a lonely gas station for a beverage, where an elderly guy whittling on the front porch shouts "Harvey you've got a customer," and the lights turn on inside. So I take Highway 14 north into the Mojave Desert, past Red Rock Canyon, into nowhere. It's now disintegrating in the desert wind, and I know that if I'm to ever see that tree, it must be before it disappears entirely. Fans have been there, enshrined it, documented it, marked the spot - and about a decade ago, they noted that the aging tree fell over and died. I won't be the first to visit U2′s Joshua Tree.