'Krblin Jihn Kabin'

While making your way through Joshua Tree, visit the home prison of a man who never existed. According to some very detailed lore constructed by the artist Eames Demetrios, a religious leader named Krblin Jihn lived in this cabin under house arrest after a rival sect, the Notgeon, defeated his Jihn Wranglikans in a long war. While living in the Kabin, he completed two translations of the Bible and the Kmmentaries n Matthew. (By the way, the Jihn Wranglikans forbid using the letters “c” and “o.”)

Don’t worry: You can brush up on the mythology before entering the Kabin (where all writings are in the Jihn Wranglikan dialect). There’s an English explanation on a site marker just outside the house. The world-building is so extensive that you can even glimpse a structure known as Kwale—the Jihn Wranglikan Mount Hermon.  

The Kabin is part of Demetrios’ “Kcymaerxthaere” project, an “ongoing work of three-dimensional fiction” that tells its stories in text plaques and, sometimes, historic sites like the Kabin (which, in 2004, became the first such site dedicated as part of the project). Kcymaerxthaere constructs an alternative universe along 29 major “rezhns;” Demetrios likens it to “a novel where every page is in a different city.”

As of 2021, there are more than 140 sites spread across six continents and 30 countries, but the Kabin stands as one of the most audacious examples of Joshua Tree’s famous artistic culture.