Two weeks until I take on the desert!

So here’s the deal- I’ve decided to start blogging in order to keep my family and friends updated on my status in the Yuha Desert. If you don’t already know I was offered a position on an internship through the Student Conservation Association (SCA). The SCA works in partnership with the better known Americorps service programs. The internship that I was offered and will be embarking on come September 29th is with the Desert Restoration Corp (DRC) under the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Southern California. 

Below I have pasted some information about the program directly from my introduction letter:

As far as the Yuha program goes: It is a really terrific program. We have been working in the Yuha Desert, on the border of Mexico and California, over six years now.  Our projects involving on-the-ground restoration, data collection and outreach are challenging yet extremely rewarding. It is a tough program and hard work but it is really worth it. All of the staff have come to love the Yuha Desert in ways that are often hard to describe. It is one of our hopes that you will come to love the conservation service work we do, the deserts within which we serve and your fellow corps members too by the end of the year here. 

 

You will be based in El Centro, California. It is an agriculture community about 120 miles east of San Diego and 70 miles west of Yuma, Arizona. It is a border town. The border is about 7 miles south of the actual town of El Centro but the town itself it most certainly a border town and in some ways it is like living in another country.  Our work is in the Yuha Desert (which is in the Sonoran desert), of which the town of El Centro sits in the heart.  We work in the desert for 10 days at a time, camping mostly, and during workdays in town and off-days, we live in the heart of El Centro- not too far from downtown.

 

In some places of the town you might feel like you were in Mexico and in others… close your eyes and then open them  and you could  be ‘in any city anywhere in America’ because of all the corporate/chain retailers and restaurants. We have Target, Wal Mart, a mall even with a variety of stores, and a range of grocery stores to shop at from El Sol, which sells open containers of beans and rice in the main section of the store next to cactus to Albertsons where you can get your latte and your gourmet salad bar. So, you will have choices. We are 15 minutes from the international border and it is amazing when you cross that line how different that world is from our world. The Imperial Valley is fascinating and harbors important cultural and historical resources including amazing archaeological finds, a path historically used by missionaries traveling from Mexico towards San Francisco, and the interesting and complicated local agricultural industry. Good Mexican food and opportunites to practice Spanish abound. You can learn a lot here about many different cultures and eco-systems. 

 

One of the wonderful things about our restoration work in the Yuha Desert is that we get to do important conservation as well as see how complicated and urgent conservation is both socio-economically and biologically.

 

And you aren’t limited to El Centro. Greyhound buses run daily from El Centro to San Diego where you have access to trains to L.A. and all the big city life you can imagine.

Along with my endless paperwork I was given a set of expectations- (those of you who know me well should get a laugh out of these)

Expections:

Be ready for an adventure, challenge, hard times, epiphanies, being bored, being right, being wrong, having conflict, needing to escape, loving it, things moving too slowly, things moving too quickly, be ready for about anything. 

This is to say: be reflective of yourself and others and be willing to adapt and to change when needed; to not judge (at least right away).  Give this a chance even if it seems a little crazy and different and you are not sure yet

Try to see what difference, difficult or even the sameness has to offer you.

“All beginnings are apt to be shadowy.” (Rachel Carson) and if things feel awkward or weird: that’s normal. Hang with it all for a while and see if it can become something good.

Be willing to open up and listen to some different opinions or ways of doing things; don’t be afraid to share your thoughts respectfully and offer your opinions, even if you have none,  to add to the discussion or teaching or process. We spend a lot of time talking, sharing and working toward consensus –or at least as close as we can get. 

Be ready for some structure: house chores, rules and protocols, gear and work chores and schedules. This is a different type of wilderness experience than many: it is fully aware of contemporary/modern world’s but if you can completely immerse yourself in the process, project and the methods, a very deep wilderness/nature experience may result. 

Jump in to help out-even when you are tired or bored or have finished your bit. Clean up after yourself and put more toilet paper on the roll when you finish it. Take the trash out if it is overflowing; don’t eat the last bagel if you already had one or if you haven’t asked if others want to share it first. 

Don’t hide in your laptop or cell phone or any other distraction: please be fully present. 

Try to be as timely as you can. I know things happen so we’ll always be flexible but when we meet for people other than our group we do need to be on time so keep that in mind and let’s form good habits now. 

Ask questions; question the processes, the techniques, and your leadership. This is how we get better, make important changes and adapt. BUT please please please always be respectful and appropriate in place, time and way you question. 

We do chores, we hang together a lot, we follow rules. BUT this doesn’t mean you can’t be you. That you can’t try on different hats so to speak of your personality and your diet and your world views.  Take time for you- always make sure you know what you are doing here and what you are getting out of it; even if you are here and it all seems crazy and you don’t know why but you know you need to go through it (this is me! haha)- that is reason enough to know why you are here.  Take time to sleep, to journal, to read, to play music, go for a run or a walk to draw, to write letters. Stay in your own movie for you will get the most and give the most when you are there. 

 

Take notes, ask questions about things. There is a lot to know so take it bit by bit. 

Drink lots of water.

Tell your story (and stories) too. They will add to our understanding of you and us as a group.

Go slowly- we have all year.

I fly out Tuesday September 29th and finish May 18th 2010. Hopefully I can keep a regular blog going (at least to let you guys know I’m alive and kicking), but I would really like to use this technology as a record of my adventures working in the great desert wilderness. I will post pictures and anything else appropriate to keep you all up to date on my experiences.

Now it’s time to seriously think about packing... 

:)