I’ve moved! This is my grand return to the Mojave, to the eco-friendly little town at the doorstep of Death Valley that started my desert love affair…
I realize that there’s been a brief pause to my posts after a flurry of Spring activity. The reason is that I have in fact relocated to the insanely small town of Shoshone, California (permanent to semi-permanent population varies between 20-30ish people and often doubles when a group of students or scientists come to town). This eastern Mojave oasis is the center of my desert universe and the gateway to Death Valley National Park (DVNP).
What brought me here initially, to this fairly remote corner of California (15 minutes driving time to the border with Nevada) is a class field trip in the Fall of 2017. A deeply influential professor who subsequently became my thesis advisor and mentor, Monica Argandona, brought me and about twenty something other Environmental Science & Policy majors/minors on a weekend-long field trip to experience the desert in person, hands-on learning if you will. Shoshone, and more specifically, the Shoshone Education & Research Center (SHEAR), served as our base of operations for setting off into Death Valley and its surroundings. Living in Long beach at the time, and having spent the entirety of my life living in either the Inland Empire or Los Angeles County, Shoshone and Death Valley seemed otherworldly. These were incredibly strange surroundings that appeared welcoming and somehow also unforgiving. I was captivated from day one.
After moving to Yermo in the Summer of 2020, I came back to Shoshone and the Amargosa Basin periodically and whenever I could for the purposes of self reflection and instilling inner peace in measured amounts. I would arrive after an hour and a half drive (far better than 3-4) and sit at a bench by the Pupfish ponds and contemplate my life direction, what it meant to be alive and here, what I ultimately wanted to accomplish and who I wanted to become. This period of time became more crucial in a formative sense than I could have realized until relatively recently. I wondered aloud in that angsty sense of despair familiar to early twenty somethings who wish their life was more figured out than it is. And, well, here I am. Maybe I did figure it all out without knowing at the time.
Fast forward to February of this year, I was enticed back once more to attend the Winter meeting of the Sierra Club Desert Committee, where I presented several poems centered on desert conservation from my first book, Creosote Wash. One poem in particular, “No More Delays,” was later published in the March 2023 issue of the Desert Report. As a result of my impromptu reading at the February meeting, I was offered an artist in residency term that I accepted for a two-week period in May 2023. It became a foundational weekend in that I was able to connect with tried and true desert folk from a variety of conservation-oriented organizations, while inadvertently laying a foundation for my eventual residence in Shoshone.
An incidental discovery of a job posting for Friends of the Amargosa Basin (FAB) in April led to interviews and a job offer as the Program Director for the small, yet mighty, environmental nonprofit whose overarching mission is the establishment of a National Monument encompassing the Amargosa Basin (ABNM). As a budding lover of public lands, the Mojave desert, and rural community character, I am ecstatic to have found this opportunity to help protect and sustain what I cherish. I aim to grow in concert with the vitality of this basin, and it is my sincere hope that National Monument status is bestowed in due time, as it is so richly deserved. Stay tuned for fresh updates over the patient road ahead!