Lifelong high desert resident
She has lived in the California high desert her whole life, not visited it for a season. The observations on this site about weather, light, seasons and ground conditions come from that, not from research.
The person behind it
Brenda Gunn
Lifelong high desert resident, hiker and geology enthusiast. She founded The Joshua Tree Crater Company and photographs the desert it works in herself.
Brenda Gunn is a lifelong resident of the California high desert. She founded The Joshua Tree Crater Company, and its sister brand ExplOrbit, from the town of Joshua Tree, where she still lives and where every certificate is printed and packed.
She did not move out here for the view. She grew up with this ground, which is a different relationship with a place than a visitor has. It means the seasons on this site are the real ones, including the odd February morning when it snows on a Joshua tree and nobody who has only read about the Mojave believes you.
Her two long-standing interests are the ones the desert hands you if you stay: what is underfoot, and what is overhead. She walks the nature trails around Joshua Tree, picks up rock, and keeps and photographs the specimens she finds interesting. The same habit of looking closely is what turned into a company built on lunar craters, which are simply the same question asked about a different surface.
She is also the photographer. The Joshua Tree pictures here are hers, shot on her own trails and at her own kitchen table: the home page, the gallery, the dark skies page, the contact page and every rock specimen on the geology page. They exist nowhere else on the internet, so the desert you are looking at is genuinely the desert this company works in. The lunar photography is not hers, and the last few bought-in desert shots are being swapped out for her own as she takes them.
In short
- Role
- Founder of ExplOrbit and The Joshua Tree Crater Company
- Based in
- Joshua Tree, California
- Writes about
- Mojave Desert geology, Colorado Desert, California high desert, Joshua Tree National Park
What backs the writing
Where the knowledge actually comes from
Four things that are true, and that the rest of this site demonstrates rather than asserts.
Walks the trails herself
The nature trails around Joshua Tree are where the photographs on this site were taken. She is out on them regularly, which is why the desert pages describe what the ground actually looks like in a given month rather than what a guidebook says.
Geology enthusiast and collector
She collects and photographs high desert rock, and keeps specimens. The rock photographs on the desert geology page are her own, shot at home, of stones she has picked up and kept.
Donates specimens to local classrooms
Over years of collecting, she has given specimens to local schools and teachers to use as geology samples, rather than keeping every stone she finds.
Photographs the desert herself
The Joshua Tree pictures here are hers rather than stock: the home page, the gallery, the dark skies page, the contact page and every rock specimen on the geology page. Those images exist nowhere else on the internet, so the ground you are looking at is genuinely the ground this company works on.
Her work on this site
What she writes and photographs
Desert Geology
What the rock around Joshua Tree actually is, why the boulders are stacked and rounded, and the specimens she keeps at home, photographed in her own hand.
Read itDark Skies of Joshua Tree
Observing conditions in the high desert, written from standing out in it rather than from a light-pollution map.
Read itThe Field Notes
The guide that ships inside every gift package: how to read a crater, which phase reveals what, and where to point a telescope first.
Read itEditorials
Longer writing on lunar conservation and the orbital environment, published in full with its factual sources listed.
Read itHer photographs
Shot on her own trails
A sample. The full set runs across the home page, the dark skies page and the desert geology page.
Her photographs are © Brenda Gunn and are not licensed for reuse.
What she is not
She is an enthusiast, not a credentialled geologist or astronomer, and this site does not pretend otherwise. Where a page states a figure, an age or a measurement, it is taken from a published scientific source and that source is named on the page so you can check it yourself.
What she brings is the other half: decades of living on this ground, walking it, and looking at it closely. That is worth saying out loud, and it is worth keeping separate from the science.
The Joshua Tree Crater Company is independent. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the National Park Service, NASA, or the International Astronomical Union.
