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A poet's hiking vacation turns deadly in soaring Mojave heat; his true survival story leaves you with chills. Rosenthal’s shocking ordeal was covered by The Discovery Channel and on "Fight to Survive" with Bear Grylls.
A real estate broker in Downtown Los Angeles, Ed Rosenthal's passion is poetry, writing about the historic buildings he sells and advocates to preserve. He hates slumlords, is fed up with his buyers, and finally escapes to the Mojave to bathe at a natural spring and take his favorite hiking trip in Joshua Tree National Park. But his vacation soon turns into a nightmare. Over six grueling days without water, food, or hope, he discovers a well of perseverance in the snippets of his life that play over the deadly but inspiring landscape, in which he finds himself utterly and inexplicably lost. The God of Random Chance has, despite his best efforts his whole life, finally caught up to him. He describes his ordeal and its setting in intimate, vivid detail: surreal visions mix with wayfinding and intuitive wisdom in a poet’s-eye view of the life-lessons and magic that the desert can hold.
—Elena Karina Byrne, poet and Poetry Director, LA Times Festival of Books
Rosenthal, who is Jewish but not particularly devout, prayed. … He prayed for rain, and 10 seconds later it rained. He lay down in amazement and the drops wet his parched tongue.
—LA Times
The afternoon hike turned into a six-day nightmare when Rosenthal got lost. Search teams on horseback and in helicopters combed the area, but, as time dragged on, did not expect to find him alive. Rosenthal was missing during one of California’s worst heat waves in years. It reached 120 degrees in the desert
—ABC News
What he did next was inspired and most probably saved his life.... He began to write…
—Bear Grylls, "Escape From Hell" on The Discovery Channel
Ed Rosenthal’s gripping Salvation Canyon is about a desert hike gone wrong and a transformative, face-to-face confrontation with death…. The narrative is poignant as it reveals the clash between Rosenthal’s longing to merge with the beauty he saw around him, including the daytime landscape brushed with glowing color and clear night skies awash with stars, with nature’s indifference to his plight. With death near, Rosenthal wrote loving notes to his wife and daughter. Lonely, he allowed a lowly fly to befriend him. He prayed. A light rain fell. And, on the seventh day, he heard a helicopter and rejoiced. Intimate and moving, Ed Rosenthal’s memoir shows how the desert that almost took his life also laid claim to his heart.
—Kristine Morris, Foreword Reviews
The writing is marvelous, the language wholly appropriate, with snatches of humor defying the reality. Salvation Canyon is a wondrous cautionary tale, enjoyable because of what can only be termed ‘a happy ending.’
—Jane Menaster, Manhattan Book Review (5 stars)
Rosenthal also performs his poetry publicly, including at Beyond Baroque, events with the LA Community Redevelopment Agency and in old Downtown theaters like The Orpheum. In 2013, he published his collection The Desert Hat (Moonrise Press) based on his near-death experience in the Mojave Desert in 2010. Most recently his poems have been published in various California journals and with the Sierra Club.
He lives in Culver City, California with his wife, Nicole.