We’re going to be leaving the desert at some undetermined but not too-distant point in the future. We’re discussing where to go next. The Bay Area heads the list. We have to make it work, of course, so some of our plans will depend on the results of job hunting.
Regardless of where we land, I won’t be giving up desert activism — though I might not be doing it full time if I find a job that isn’t doing desert activism. I’ve done desert commuting from 400 miles away before, and I can do it again. In fact, there’s some important work to be done in the Bay Area educating people about the value of the desert: The Bay Area, after all, is the headquarters of the Sierra Club, as well as Brightsource, First Solar and a few other organizations that urgently need their priorities straightened out vis-a-vis the deserts.
But we just haven’t been able to make it work here for us, professionally or personally. And it’s time to work on cutting our losses.
So now you know. Let me know if you have the perfect job for either of us.
The best of luck to you both in finding a well-paying job that motivates you. You’re in my thoughts and I’ll keep an ear open for opportunities.
Thank you, AV.
I’m sad to hear this, but I understand, deeply, how isolated and disconnected this area is. Palm Springs and Coachella Valley are hard places to make a life in, on just about every level…...how well, how well I myself know this, having been here for 12 years! I absolutely would not be here if not for my teaching job at College of the Desert….also, I have some family here, which makes a big difference. I wish you well in your move!!! And appreciate your commitment to continued desert activism.
You could be a community solar gardener and help raise up small solar arrays everywhere. Look at http://blog.solargardens.org and register for our training program.
Send me your resume at jhughes@solarpanelhosting.com
Good luck with your move. I’ll miss the frequent Mojave updates, but the Bay Area isn’t a bad place to live. …if it weren’t for that damned bumper-to-bumper traffic smothering the place. I’ve lived in two areas in my lifetime—first in the Bay Area (born and lived in San Francisco, lived down the peninsula in La Honda, in Berkeley, and even two years at Ft. Baker at the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge when I was in the army—and now the Sonoran Desert. I moved to the Tucson area ~ ½ a lifetime ago, and now the Sonoran Desert is home. I would hate to leave it, but if I had too, I’d think about the Bay Area too. Good luck!
Chris, I think I know of the perfect job for you. Recently, someone forwarded me one of the Sierra Club desert emails and it mentioned the job of a lifetime, I felt, too bad I am not qualified, working for the Tejon Ranch Conservancy, a job putting one out in nature, a benefit of which was leading hikes on the massive property- plus other duties, the only fly in the ointment would be if enough time and energy would be left for the person hired to write on their own time.
I tossed the email but I think it was less than 2 weeks ago.
Of course one of the benefits to the rest of us would be your staying in the LA area ;-)
Sorry to hear you’ll be leaving Chris : ( Before you go we get to kidnap you and take you south of the 10!
Come to Australia! We have public health care and lots and lots of very fabulous desert habitat.
Chris, I know how economics force personal choices. I do hope your relocation is still close enough to get to the Mojave and visit the desert and the tortoises. I wrote a post this morning on your relocation and activism. I do like your poster about 99%. Best of luck for your relocation.
This Westerner-in-exile wishes you good luck with the job hunting and desert access as often as you need it.
(Not least because then I can continue to live vicariously through your writing!)
So I have to ask… why there? To me it seems the worst mix of people who talk about doing good things, but worry more about others than themselves. For example, the lawns, the cops beating people up, the mean judgemental people…
yeah, there are a lot of good people there… but I’ve found a higher percentage in a lot of other places. Or, maybe I’ve just had bad experiences. There are so many other urban areas in the west, some of them are worse than the bay area (phoenix, las vegas) but many, to me, seem better..
At least the canyons are nice, I guess. Best of luck, and may you find happiness and fulfillment…
So I have to ask… why there? To me it seems the worst mix of people who talk about doing good things, but worry more about others than themselves. For example, the lawns, the cops beating people up, the mean judgemental people…
yeah, there are a lot of good people there… but I’ve found a higher percentage in a lot of other places. Or, maybe I’ve just had bad experiences. There are so many other urban areas in the west, some of them are worse than the bay area (phoenix, las vegas) but many, to me, seem better..
At least the canyons are nice, I guess. Best of luck, and may you find happiness and fulfillment…
Sorry about the double-post. You can delete one of them (or both, if you prefer :) )
Good luck with your personal move. There is little doubt in my mind that you will still be active in desert ecology issues and desert politics. This may be an opportunity to inform more people about what is going on with giving public lands to corporations. One thing for sure, if its free they’ll take it. The urbanization of the desert and other wild areas is just another way of separating people from the natural world. Thanks for being such a wonderful dvocate!
There are a number of reasons why the Bay Area is on the list of destinations. Chief among them, for me: It’s home. There are dozens of people I love there, and hundreds more I care about. Zeke is buried there, as are two and a half decades of my adult life.
As for mean judgmental people, I spent two and a half weeks in the environs of Middlebury in 2008 and was subject to more mean judgments of my character during that period than in the previous several years of Bay Area life. I liked the countryside and the small-town architecture, but I have rarely felt so unwelcome anywhere. I got the distinct feeling that living there would have involved attempting to prove I was worthy of taking up space there, except without the eventual reward of learning about a different culture that usually accompanies that process in the Bay Area.
Which just goes to show how useful such subjective judgments are to anyone other than the person doing the judging, which is to say: not very. You couldn’t get me to agree to move to Ripton on threat of having my eyes gouged out, but I wouldn’t think of second-guessing a person for whom that mosquito-ridden racial monoculture felt like home. Meanwhile, there’s a lot wrong with the Bay Area, but after 25 years of life there I can count on fewer than ten fingers the patrician sneers directed at me there—and most of those came from my ex’s mom.
As much as i like you guys living in my city it somehow never seemed you “should” be living here. I don’t know why. Best wishes as always.
Back to the Bay Area!? Oh, it’s so expensive to live here! I wish you uber-luck in finding an affordable place to live, and also some real paid work with which to pay your rent.
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All the best,
Karen
I’m finishing up my time at San Jose State (bureaucratic deities willing, Dec ‘11); but in a chat with my advisor today, he noted that one could become a volunteer (after passing a trivial online driving safety course) to drive university vehicles (mostly Suburbans) for field trips. You get the field trip for no cost to you except the non-working days, and you get to hang out with the students and professors and Learn Stuff! Favorite destinations of the geology department, at least, are coastal beaches and week-long field trips to the Owens Valley, Death Valley, and the Mojave. Once you get settled in the Bay Area, and if you’re interested, I can put you in touch with the right geology people; use the email address I used for this message.
Don’t know why the previous message didn’t use my gravitar—maybe I typed something wrong. If a microphotograph of a quartz crystal appears next to this message, I’ve got the address right this time. If so , use this address instead of whatever was in the previous post.
I’m having a fun time trying to imagine certain mountain neighbors of mine here in this corner of the Bay Area attempting to do a “patrician sneer.” A few of them who still have both incisors might be able to pull it off after a good bath.
Does this comment itself constitute a “patrician sneer”? Maybe, but Diane says that I look just like the rest of them now, so maybe it isn’t.
hmm, sorry if i hit a nerve. i’ve had some really bad experiences in the bay area is all. Basically what you describe… a lot of people quick to judge, not very quick to listen. I haven’t come across that to anywhere near that extent in Vermont. Maybe I’m just extremely lucky.
I certainly don’t like the racial monoculture here… but I haven’t run across much integration in the bay area… it’s not just being around people of different cultures that is important, but people actually putting in the effort to build community and talk between these different groups. I’m glad you were able to find that when I never was.
I don’t know why you took to bashing my home because you didn’t like my post. I guess maybe I was doing the same, but I didn’t know it was home for you. I guess I’m done here. Best of luck in your journeys.
I can’t seem to ever get away from returning perpetually to the Bay Area, my “ancestral home.” Lately I have been getting beyond the traffic jams and snotty coffee elitists and seeing some really great incipient trends in the Bay Area about sustainability. Interesting new ideas like crop swapping and Cultural Heritage Areas. I don’t see these anywhere else. I know how that desert commute is, it can work.
one doesn’t need to be in the desert to love it as one does a dear friend. where ever you go, display to those there that your roots of activism and community stretch into these arid expanses ripe with festering biodiversity. tell them we don’t need them in our home or as neighbors. but tell them - we need them.