A House is not a Motel

your bnb in the heart of the mojave

with pacific coast soul

Welp, we changed our name. Two full years of operation. Starting Thérapie created so many opportunities for personal and business growth, but I’ve had an aesthetic vision for white plaster and blue elements like a Greek home settled into the Mojave desert. To keep these ideas packed away would be a disservice the fundamental intention behind Thérapie. Of course in the true nature of my brain, a beach house is perfect in the high desert, a hundred miles from the ocean.

With new developments and a need to grow, we’ve had an evolutionary adaptation to the vacation destination.  Following two successful years of operation with nearly a full year as a Superhost, we feel confident to move into our next growth phase.  We are “Joshua Tree Beach House”, managed by Autry Sound mgmt.

We continue to curate the feel of a Santa Monica home with Joshua Tree National Park as a shore.  White stone and plaster built ins, accents of white marble, handmade rich teak furniture, and woven textiles, combining the elements of beach minimalism.  We’re continuing to build our aesthetic between bookings and should have a cozy fireplace before Thanksgiving and a water feature hopefully around Christmas time.

In the meantime, I want to say thank you to everybody who has used the house for love over the past two years.  We’ve been host to digital nomads, weekend self care getaways from LA, loving and bonding family vacations, for proposals, weddings, and anniversaries, temporary shelters for forest fire evacuees, for yoga retreats,  mushroom trips, and the list not so trippy trips go on.  This is such a rewarding platform and heart filling service to provide.

Thank you all and we love you.

<3 Matt

Ursa Minor

It was midnight in the middle of July as I searched for constellations somewhere in the divide between Ursa Major & Minor, closer to Russia than I was home.  It’s memories like this that inhibit the fear of missing out when fire season hits.  It’s when my social media feed is full of videos of friends slamming line through the wilderness that cradles Los Angeles.  I am a one and done hotshot, spending a single year among the hardest working folks I’ve ever met.  My most memorable experiences happened in that one single year during the 2019 fire season.

We were ordered for Alaska in early July and  took a NIFC plane with a total of 5 hotshot crews.   We landed in Anchorage and soon we were parceled out into smaller units in smaller planes until we arrived on a primitive airstrip that supplied a mining operation just a little west of Denali.  We made camp on a smaller defunct airstrip that supplied the mine nearly a century ago.  The fire was burning far off over a few ranges, near to no sign or smell of smoke, but we were prepping the property creating defensible space if that possibility for a shift in winds occurred.  It never did.

Regardless, we still worked hard tripping trees and piling for hours on end.  After a few days the owner requested we actually slow down and that we were taking too much, and his entire operation would be visible to any onlookers passing by in bush planes.  Following a few days of MRE’s we finally started receiving our supply boxes, mostly boxes full of Costco steaks, bacon, eggs, bread, snickers bars and seemingly countless other supplies needing counting and inventory to supply and feed 21 firefighters.  I remember the entire assignment being mostly spent around cooking.  A pot of coffee brewed over a fire day and night.  We hunted native chaga mushrooms from the trees and added them to a second pot.  We had daily cook off challenges with the smokejumpers, coming up with creative ways to turn a box of crackers, honey, apples and instant oatmeal into apple pies.

I never found the comfort to sleep, spending every night gazing at the top of my federally assigned tent before I would eventually walk off a hundred yards from camp to gaze at the night sky thinking of my bed at home.  I thought about my soon to be daughter and how I was a full day worth of three flights away from home.  One night, still bright and around 10:30 pm, everybody arose from their tents after someone yelled “bear in camp.”  20 full grown men trampled through camp like bears, crowded around supplies, grabbing sticks, axes, clapping and yelling obscenities at the bear head peaking from the brush just next to our candy supply.  We later found out somebody was throwing hotdogs and snickers bars in the woods inciting this exact moment.  The bear now had a taste for snickers bars.  I jokingly grabbed the chainsaw and was immediately met with full support.  I started the saw and the bear took off to the other side of our supplies, where it was met by the chaos of feral men.

We often exaggerate our stories looking back, every fire being the “best I’ve ever been on”.  I learned through years of inflection, that reflection is nothing more than being enamored by the 15 minutes of euphoria of you experience after a fulfilling day of trauma.  Embrace the suck.  We talk about fire assignments like fishing trips.  The fish is always bigger in the story.  Anyway, here’s a video of me with a chainsaw squaring off with a little bear.

<3 Matt

Lemon Tree

Just recently following a three week road trip to New York, we returned home to find our lemon tree in bone dry soil, littered in faded yellow leaves, starved of water, nutrients and care.  After a day of saturating the soil the leaves sprang back but the tree had become bare, missing half of its leaves with no promise of fruit to come.  Google horticulture took me  to the cupboard seeking any possible form of magnesium or potassium.  I took every unopened dust covered children’s multivitamin bottle that my daughter refused to take over the years.  I planted dinosaur shaped magnesium and raspberry flavored iron tablets and planted them in the rehydrated soil.  I dumped half of a bag of Trader Joe’s dark roast coffee on the top of the soil.  Over the following week the tree had sprouted dozens of flowers and nearly immeasurably number of new leaves.

It was the summer we returned to LA we bought a thirty-somethin’ dollar Home Depot lemon tree and brought it home to our tiny Los Feliz studio apartment and put it in our patio.  We had this weird little diorama outdoor space.  A courtyard wrapped by a blue picket fence, grass turf and a swing set. Surrounded by four walls with a few stories of dozens of windows belonging to dozens of neighbors.  It wasn’t private but it was privately ours and absolutely unique.

The sun only shown on the lemon tree for a few short hours a day.  I ritually moved the tree to the western wall as the sun ascended from the east, and hours later moved the tree to the eastern wall as the sun descended into the west.  Struggling to stay green, it wasn’t until I moved the tree to Long Beach on a fully exposed patio where it began to thrive and fruit.  The first flower to successfully fruit budded by June taking almost 5 months to grow and ripen.

Dozens followed over the following few years.  Clover loves to water and nurture our lemon tree but has never once tried one.  During a time where your child learns to manipulate you into buying them a toy for somebody else’s birthday, it’s amazing to watch them do something so selfless.  The lemon tree has so much love and family memory with every bud that fruits and fruit that falls.  When the tree becomes sturdy enough to withstand the Mojave, it will be planted at the desert house for everyone to enjoy.

It Must be Why I’m Thinking of Las Vegas

I love when my guests let me know they’ll be arriving via Las Vegas.  You can take a cheap flight to Las Vegas with nothing more than a spare set of cloths and a toothbrush, no baggage fees and it will almost always beat flying followed by immediately leaving LA.  If you’re lucky enough you can sometimes find a rental for nearly $7 a day. Just quickly replace your toiletries with a quick Target detour.

I don’t gamble conventionally.  I have a tendency to bet everything on roulette walking away with enough chips to cover the rest of my trip. I have a wild winning streak having covered all of my expenses of a few trips over the past few years.

Following one fire seasons we were returning to Los Angeles where I flew into Las Vegas before searching for a new apartment in Los Feliz.  Before picking up my rental I stopped at the roulette table with $100. Honoring my own superstitions I waited a few spins and bet it all on red.  I have a rule after my first win where I will pocket my original hundred, think of it like a safety measure to assure I don’t go to an ATM more than the one time.  Passing on that second spin because superstition didn’t say black, but said red wasn’t it.  After a beat, I bet it all on red again and doubled my hundred.  I left the $200 on red, doubled for $400, tipped the dealer and was done in 5 minutes.  Ready for my economy rental, hopeful for a free upgrade, playlist picked out.

Could you imagine if Stevie Nicks also sang on “Holiday Road?”

Las Vegas for me is watching big horn sheep in the Valley of Fire.  It’s coffee and skipping stones at Lake Mead before a scenic drive through Mojave National Preserve.  The trip from Las Vegas to Joshua Tree is almost a secret.  In my opinion you’ll see more Joshua Trees in the Preserve than you will in the National Park.  Unfortunately the area was devastated by extreme wildfires that razed so much landscape.  For anybody visiting Joshua Tree let me suggest you look into these travel arrangements. It’s nearly 3 and a half hours from Las Vegas to Thérapie and it will dramatically upgrade your vacation experience.

<3

Matt

Wildflowers by Tom Petty

It seems like we've entered another rainy season in the high desert. We wait with anticipation for the wildflower seeds of 2023 to germinate and paint our landscape. Last year we experienced our very own little private front yard wildflower superbloom. Only the year before it was overcrowded with invasive mustard plants that can grow almost waist high in a mear fortnite.

By luck and chance, only a few guests will have the opportunity to take in this lottery moment of mojave desert beauty. We had the chance last year during a small vacancy window for room renovations. We picked as many colors during the early sunrise and wrapped them in a little boquet. Under the carport we hung our lottery memory to dry by the warm spring cross breeze that channels down our terraced driveway though the backyard.

Between demo-ing faux closet walls and applying knock down wall texture, we found time to dance to Sam Cooke on the record player, trying the Mexican restaurant down the road, eventually venturing into the park to stargaze. It’s picture perfect, the moment a child makes the connection between out of pitch nursery rhymes and twinkling stars within a pitch black sky.

Nearing a year later the colors have yet to fade as the dried floral arrangement hangs among polaroid milemarkers of growth and love.

<3 Matt

It’s 30 Minutes ‘til Palm Springs

Every geographic landmark offers it’s on perspective of sunset. While driving inside the National Park you can chase variations of sunsets along the backdrop of rolling peaks and bouldering pinnacles. My personal favorite sunset is at the tail end of the Black Rock hike overlooking Morongo Valley. The sun begins to set at the start of the Hi-View Trail roughly around 4pm while it sets around 4:30 as you begin to summit. It’s a short hike but the absolute only view from Joshua Tree National Park with the sun setting around San Gorgonio peak, painting a panorama of silhouetting shades of blue ridges.

From thérapie it’s 30 minutes ‘til Palm Springs. We’re located right in Old Town Yucca Valley, a 3 minute drive to Frontier Cafe. They serve Joshua Tree Coffee and I know their espresso will have me up all night, but it feels so therapeutic to have an iced americano paired with a scenic drive. Morongo Pass only takes 5 minutes where you lose service, so I have my Frank Sinatra playlist and maintain the connection between atmosphere and ambiance.

As you exit the pass, summertime sunsets and storms settle over Mount San Jacinto. desert monsoons shore over the peaks, the impenetrable heat of Palm Springs rescinding the promise of an early July shower with virga. Streaks of evaporating rainfall, rising into a haze of the last sunshine, casting the first shadow over everything Palm Springs offers. Midcentury modern events, restaurants where gathering with the ones you love are unexplainably perfect, the pool club at the Saguaro Hotel, shops fronted by bronze statues, resting on water fountains, between the walk of stars. When you get that shade from the sun, 110 degrees in Palm Springs is simply warm for the soul.

Anyway, the webstore will be up in a few days and we’ll have sunglasses.

<3 Matt

The Science of Pyrophytic Growth and Other Boring Stories

I have the most un-unique story of uprooting my entire life in New York and moving west for skateboarding, warm beach blanket winter days and watching the sun set every chance I could get. I decided to move here after a 2004 cross country skateboarding trip entirely inspired by the “Barbarians at the Gate” VHS skate tape. I filmed our entire trip, tapes full of tom-foolery and great friends. It took me a decade to move. In 2014 I bought a massive 16 passenger tour van from the band Polar Bear Club. For those that know, another move inspired by “Birdhouse: The End” on VHS. That spring I packed every square inch of that van and drove across the country to Long Beach, California. I’ve skated about about 5 times since I moved here.

I owe all of the proceeding career driven gear shifting to my friend Aaron who somehow went pedal to the floor and never managed to hit the wall. That October, I began looking into fire while spending a significant amount of time parked at a campground in Joshua Tree. I would go miles into the park just for a few more on my running shoes. I’d often opt to transfer the 50 pound car jack from the trunk to my back, wrapped in a horse blanket, stuffed it in my backpack, pushing down the road, driven.

From then on I was traveling. It was summer in Chico, California, summer in Flagstaff, Arizona, circling right back to Joshua Tree. I was stationed right where it all started, right next to the campground. The following years I spent mostly in Los Angeles with a stint just outside of Seattle before making my way back to LA. For the better part of a decade I pushed myself beyond capacity and never hit the wall, but by a careless driver instead. Texting at the speed of 30 miles an hour he drove into the back of my parked car with enough force to alter the order of a few discs in my spine and subsequently my career. So much done and so much lost in nearly a decade that passed almost as shortly as I had summarized for you.

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I took my entire investment of blood, sweat, tears and lung quality and bought a house right out side of Joshua Tree National Park. The house just a few miles from that campsite, next to the fire station. Joshua Tree brought me to fire and fire brought me to Joshua Tree. In a philosophical way, cyclical patterns, reoccurrences, every alignment of the spiritual idea of the unseen “meant to be’s” are not too dissimilar from the hard science of the behavior of fire.

Because of fire I rooted, I grew. I was shaped, burned and hardened. With that, fire will always be a part of the branding story I have to tell. I guess it is unique. Hi. My name is Matt.

<3 Matt

Bienvenue

Welcome to your Thérapie at Joshua Tree!  Thérapie is the soul, guided from the heart, represented under the business, Autry Sound mgmt.  This newsletter serves as a pulse and living article for everything our little cozy Mojave mountain home embodies. 

After finding somebody selling a San Francisco Chronicle newspaper box, I immediately envisioned writing out my wild stories that drove me to buy a house next to Joshua Tree National Park.  I thought of the newspaper box like the ones at the entrance of the park, filled with our history and experience.  Not just mine, but my guests and their stories, my friends and their unbounded talents, anything that imbues the spirit of gathering and recreation. I want to share the insane vehicle of my vision, navigated by ADHD and fueled by espresso.  We'll have a webstore up shortly with every nuanced experience at Thérapie. 

In the meantime, to all of my guests, friends and greatest supporters, feel free to send me any photos you have from your past stay, or and inquiries about stays.  If you want your photos, art, or items you would like featured, reach out.

<3

Matt