The film shows thirty-eight of Heinz Emigholz's notebooks and sketchbooks from 1996 to 2004: cinematic studies of marble inlays on the memorial slabs in the Johannes Cathedral in Valetta, Malta in 2004; of Skull Rock in Joshua Tree Desert in California, which gave the series its title; of Cerro Castellan in Big Bend National Park in Texas; of a rock shop in Quartzsite, Arizona that sells remnants from the glass factory in Henryetta as "gems from Mexico"; scenes from Bartlesville in Oklahoma; a tree covered with shoes on Highway 62 in California in 2002; and, in Gabriele D'Annunzio's Villa Cargnacco in Gardone, Italy in 1997, the mask merchant's room, the reliquary room, the workshop, the globe room, the Apollinian veranda, the room of the Cheli, and the Zambracca.