Claire Wolfe: Learning to love the high desert

[Lucille]

I didn't know she moved! I think she's here in AZ. Granted, there are a lot of high desert areas out west, but AZ's Constitutional Carry would be a huge draw for her. DH thinks she's in Colorado.

She wrote about it so beautifully, and has excellent advice about living in it.

Even the unfriendly animal life is a blessing of sorts. Life and death are close to the surface here, and unlike in cities, you can't ignore the fact that you're a participant. They are real and solid things, not the fuzzy hypotheticals that "civilization" makes of them. Here there are eaters, and there are the eaten. Sometimes they switch places without notice, but they never stand outside the drama. Here, the wolf can literally be at the door, and he'll want to know what you're prepared to do about it.

There is something terrible about that. There is something beautiful about that. You can move to the desert, but that's not the end of the story. Next you have to earn the right to live here.

http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/wolfe120.html

Earlier this year, the dogs and I got taxed out of Cabin Sweet Cabin. With a little help from our friends, we packed a small trailer with our dog bowls, our six-gallon superpails of lentils, and even a few clothes. And off we went.

High desert was where we landed—because that's where a welcoming mini-community awaited. But oh my goodness, this place is six thousand feet too high and more than 1,000 miles from all I once held dear. Sometimes I'm convinced it's on another planet.

My idea of "country" is blue-green, dripping woods, tall trees, and earthy scents. Moving from my Pacific Northwest home to the brown, sharp, and pointy desert has required some serious adjustments.

Take altitude, for instance. Do you know the difference between sea level and more than a mile high? Feeling like an 80-year-old with emphysema, that's what. Never mind the fact that everybody who moves here from a coast goes through it and eventually acclimates. No matter how much pride you take in your physical condition, moving to the high desert from low altitude will definitely humble you.


This is what the locals—with straight face—call a tree.

And how about terrain? Last Chance Gulch (what I call this place) is surrounded by miles of wide-open spaces and a surprising variety of wild landscapes. But they're all...well, desert. And the local frame of reference is...unusual. My neighbors keep talking about the "trees." I look around and don't see a tree anywhere, all the way to the horizon. Not one. "You mean those stubby little bushes?" "Yeah. But they're trees. They're junipers." "Oh. Coulda fooled me."

Still, the vistas are sweeping, and offer their own gaunt sort of beauty. And I never know what new wonders I'll find around the next corner. Late last summer, when an evening breeze made the temperature reasonable enough for the dogs to slouch out of their tiny patches of shade, I joined one of the human gulchers and a crowd of canines in a walk. My friend offered to show me a field of petrified wood. Then he stepped off the road.

Over a ridge and along a precarious deer-path of shale we went. Into an unexpected canyon swimming-hole went the dogs. We climbed and climbed and climbed some more. (Remember that gasping 80-year-old? Well, that was me.)

But finally...our reward. We emerged on a rock-paved plateau, littered with bits of petrified trees everywhere we looked. There were even trees embedded in thick slabs of sandstone—just to give you an idea how old that landscape is.

This is so true:

Off-grid living can be taken as a perennial nuisance—which it is because something always needs tweaking or maintaining, even on a better system than ours. But it can also be an opportunity to shine. Because convenient as the great centrally-controlled power grid can be, it infantilizes us. Grid power lies beneath the surface of every moment of most people's lives, encouraging us to put our trust in unseen others for the things we need. That's fine as far as it goes. But what happens when that grid goes? Mostly, as we see all too often on the news, people whine like babies when all that nice power—provided by somebody else—goes away, even for a little while.

I've been suffering from a normalcy bias, not worrying so much about a well and our own power. That helped snap me out of it. Thanks, Claire!

I posted a generous excerpt, but there is lots more at the link.

[Deborah K]

Love Claire.

[Natural Citizen]

New Mexico is a place I'd like to live. Some of those stone "mansions" (even though they're only reglar ol houses) up in the desert hills are really nice. Off topic, I know, but AZ speak reminded me of it.

[youngbuck]

I spent years in the high desert. Nowhere else is quite like it. Everything is unique there, including the plants, animals, the smell of the air, the weather patterns, you name it. Beautiful and serene, yet sometimes brutal, it's a land of nostalgia for me.