Writing by Jonathan Goldenberg
Epiphany 2: Public Lands Ranching is not an Issue
Epiphany 4: Fight to Nix Your Simplistic Energy Fix
Other Writing:
» Changing Course of a Stream
» An Honest Morning Weather Report
» The Weather of Colors
» The Shock of Place
Epiphany 1: The Wonders of Green Grass
As a northeasterner I grew up surrounded by green. Gardens, grass, and trees — my climate had it all. Water was always plentiful. I never could understand how desert dwellers could think of bringing these exotic mats of green to a land of dust. An ignorance of place I called it. To me, then, it was that simple.
And so, when I got to the desert, I drove into Reno dry.
Reno shared my complexion.
The night before my journey into this Nevadan city with little brother status, under a glowing moon, I slept on sun-parched ground. With the smallest of movements dust would launch off this ground and onto my skin, coating it in a suffocating layer.
I awoke and rose looking as if I had spent a day in a tanning salon with all of the benefits and none of the ill side effects; my pale skin was now a light brown that no amount of cleaning could reverse.
Reno, when seen from the crest of I-80 heading west as it dives into the valley in which Reno dwells, is a destination devoid of green. Devoid, except for the flashing neon dollar signs proudly displayed by the many gambling dens hosted by this city of original sin.
Stuck between tan walls, from afar the city looks its part.
But once inside the city something stunning happens…
GREEN emerges from all sides, nooks, and crannies!
Deciduous trees, native to my northeast, spring from the artificially waterlogged ground oblivious to their tedious hold on life. A life made possible by citizens who seem to forget that water — like money — does not grow on trees. And under these foreign behemoths are lush green grasses — the color of the money that waters them — rising from the falsely rich soil.
And at this moment, as my dusty eyes alighted on the sea of green within Reno, something spurred by the pointy grass and completely unknown to me welled up from within…
I was smiling.
No longer was I in a hot, dusty, dry climate. I was back home. I rolled in the grass, their straight green spires picking the dirt from my pores, massaging my back, face, and hands — all dry and cracked from the harsh environment where I bedded down the night before.
Like the myths of green perpetrated by the slyly welcoming casinos of Reno I knew this myth of green was equally too good to be true — yet I desperately wanted to believe. Never have I so loved the green grass and never have I seen pre-conceived notions of right and wrong disappear from my head as quickly as the dirt did from my skin.
Though lush green is out of place and unsustainable in large quantities within desert environment, the first thing I would do if I were to move to Reno — or another dry desert community — would be to surround myself with the vividly living green I found and loved within Reno city limits. Green grass proudly proclaims life to all who look. It is no mystery to me now why desert dwellers surround themselves with such an item.
At first glance, I may seem to be a walking contradiction. But just as my first glances southwest at desert life, I believe such a statement would be equally ignorant and simplistic. I now see within myself a new consciousness in relation to the complexity of this human-altered landscape.
No longer will this northeasterner blindly decree black and white right and wrong from afar. I now know the realities of desert green. Green will not be exterminated from such places because of its pull on the human psyche.
However, there is no denying the scarcity of water in the west and the mass over-drawing of this resource that is taking place across this region —partially because of this obsession with green.
Some-things need to happen to accommodate both.
But what?
How do I begin to reconcile these two conflicting perceptions? More importantly, how do those who live within desert communities, such as Reno, begin this process?
Such complex problems, often known as Wicked Problems encompass not only political, or social, or economic issues — but all three. All intertwined. If one issue is addressed independently of the other two, none are addressed. The social desire for green grass does not match the economic costs of bringing in such water, and furious western water politics revolve around both.
In recognition of such complexity I no longer have an answer to desert green like I did for many years. But, in a way, this is my point. No one has one single answer, but many have multiple small thoughts and ideas that can be turned into answers.
And so, I left Reno that day wet. Wet with a flood of new, small thoughts and ideas that may, eventually, grow into answers
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Epiphany 2: Public Lands Ranching is not an Issue
Along our journey, us Westies have been discussing the perceived issue of public lands grazing. “Who are these lands for?” was the question asked, and we jumped in offering nuanced perspectives.
Yet why was it that no one in our group of environmentally minded, west-coast college students knew the first thing about public lands ranching in the West before the start of our journey?
The reason? Public lands ranching is not an issue in the West. Public lands are solidly those of the cows and ranchers, and the political structures and cultures associated with them.
Who else besides Jon Marvel and Western Watersheds Project advocates for cattle-free public lands? Two small groups The Greater Yellowstone Coalition outside of Yellowstone, and The Grand Canyon Trust outside The Grand Canyon — work to retire grazing permits. Jon says that these two groups and WWP are it. There are no others. Large environmental groups only deal extraneously with public lands grazing, and small environmental groups that indirectly agree with WWP shy from offering public support.
Why is this? Political and cultural pressures to support public lands ranching are insurmountable for groups that are only indirectly connected to the removal of cattle from public lands. No one likes to mess with stability, and if the power structures cemented upon public lands grazing are disrupted, political loyalties and other collaborations will be severely harmed. Therefore, for these and other groups, there is little incentive to mess with a stable system.
Why are these political and cultural pressures so high? If environmentally conscious students didn’t know about public lands grazing, why would the American public be different and know enough to care? Also, this western cowboy culture that easily entrances us Americans is not easily countered and replaced. It is a culture fiercely resistant to change for it knows first hand what happened to the cultures of the Native Americans who used to inhabit the west. How can Jon Marvel end public lands ranching through litigation when ranching receives high levels of political and cultural support meshed with a nation-wide ignorance concerning public lands? The answer is that he does not plan to do so. Litigating against individual ranchers is unsustainable, he says, and impractical to achieving larger change.
My theory is that Jon wants to gain the attention of a greater share of the American public. We have been told many times that those who yell the loudest get heard, and Jon Marvel is certainly yelling. Yelling so a national audience can hear his message; an audience that now has no knowledge of public lands and therefore no voice. Yelling to wake cites and suburbs to the fact that Public lands are their lands too, not just the lands of a small — yet highly powerful — minority.
Until the power monopoly of ranching has an adversary in the general public — rather than a lender of ignorant support — nothing will change. Jon is not only litigating, he is visiting classrooms in non-ranching communities and speaking about the harms of public lands ranching. Talking with children gives Jon an opportunity to counter the eventual complacency of children to a cultural view of the West that is heavily based on public lands ranching, and replace it with an environmentally based cultural view. In turning children away from cultural apathy Jon enables them to realize their involvement in public lands ranching. In doing so, Jon gains another front in his effort to make public lands ranching into an issue that people from urban areas care about and act upon.
Once this is the case, more moderate groups focused on public lands grazing will have the support to spring up nationwide. Right now proposals to offer ranchers optional buy-outs — an idea many in our group thought to be moderate — are heavily opposed by ranchers. It is a move that threatens their power and political clout. It only exists around national treasures such as Yellowstone and The Grand Canyon because a wide range of Americans give value to these exceptional places. For Jon’s fight to progress, Americans must start to see their public lands with similar value.
Jon is an outlier, non-representative of that which is taking place in the west. His cause is invisible to most of the population. Until anti-ranching activists are able to mount a feasible opposition to public lands ranching through public support, the “issue” of public lands ranching will not exist.
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Fight To Nix Your Simplistic Energy Fix
The first thing I knew about Jim Harvey was his adamant opposition to large-scale solar projects on public lands. I immediately disagreed. Two days later he walked into our group wearing dark sunglasses and a black buttoned down shirt, sporting a long ponytail, and had a face adorned with symmetrical silver studs. Jim was certainly not the stereotypical clean-cut businessman. I assumed he was going to get up on his soapbox and give an emotionally laden speech about all the animals and plants that would be viciously destroyed by these projects. I had seen the flat desert areas where such projects had been proposed. They were blazingly hot, directly under a sun that shines 360 days a year, and peppered with creosote bush that can be found across the desert southwest. My mind prepared to yell of the hypocrisy in opposing large-scale solar for environmental reasons, thereby encouraging the status quo of coal power plant construction. I thought I knew everything about renewable energy development. In my mind it was a done deal.
Then Jim opened his mouth. I was floored. My initially simplistic view of green energy production crumbled under the weight of his words, falling and becoming one with the dusty ground. Jim was extraordinarily eloquent. He parlayed critiques of his vision by citing the exorbitant economic and environmental costs that would be exacted by a large-scale solar project in the desert such as the vast amounts of water needed to keep such plants functioning. This is the desert Southwest and the little water that exists here is fought over tooth and nail. Proposed plants would tap existing groundwater reserves, depleting them at a remarkable rate. Reserves would—in the not distant future—become unusable for both the human and environmental communities that now depend on them. When the water runs out, not only will the power plants fail, communities will dry up and blow away with them.
Jim, and his group The Alliance for Responsible Energy Policy, are in no way opposed to all solar projects. They believe that before touching undeveloped public lands—which is where centralized projects would be placed—solar panels should be installed on the roof of every house and building in southern California. This is not a new idea. It is called distributed energy production and has for the past fifteen years been operating in Germany—a country with significantly less sunlight on average than the United States as a whole and especially southern California.
The German model motivates homeowners to place solar panels on their roofs through a system of feed-in tariffs. Feed-in tariffs pay homeowners a fixed rate for the energy that they produce. In other words, if homeowners produce more energy than they use, they get paid a market rate for that energy—in Germany it ranges around fifty cents a kilowatt-hour—effectively becoming a small power plant for the surrounding community. It is not a perfect program, but has made many inroads within a system formally based on centralized power production. As an idea, this stretches the range of what we see as possible.
Thinking back to Jim weeks later, I realized that his argument for local energy production was not new to my journey across the west. I heard it in a slightly different context from Wallowa Resources in Northern Oregon, an organization that works to find ways both to preserve the natural resources of the area and to use them to create jobs and fund area projects. Wallowa resources successfully pushed area schools to use wood pellet burning heaters to warm buildings. I heard a similar idea in Aspen Colorado where the city has dedicated itself to reducing the power—wind, solar, and coal—it buys from far-off sites, by developing micro-hydro, solar, and wind for local use instead. The essential feature of all three projects—Aspen’s development of micro-hydro, solar, and wind; the Wallowa project to promote wood pellet burning heaters; and Jim’s plan to roof Southern California with solar panels—is that energy is produced locally and stays local, supporting the people and community where it is developed.
With my simplistic view of “solving” the energy issues confronting the United States now shattered, I sometimes think back to the moment before I met Jim, and foolishly wish that it could have remained that simple. And what if I did choose to remain in that virtual reality where any “green” energy is accepted blindly as a savior? I would be susceptible to championing a cause that would take one step forward in fixing our reliance on coal, nuclear, oil, and gas power and two steps backwards in addressing community needs, environmental needs, and economic needs on both local and national levels. Our current national mindset focuses primarily on keeping the status quo of centralized production. What we need is a new mindset, crafted to confront the trade-offs between centralized and de-centralized green energy production.
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Changing Course of a Stream
Looking down from the northeast, I once hated the desert.
But then…
I fell upon relief and brief reprieve.
Between sands, hidden by its own desire at the base of imposing granite formations, ran tranquility.
Thick green surrounded me, accompanied by a bright red protruding from rich ground cut away by the force that made this creation reality; the same giant force that shook the rocks beneath my feet and shocked them spontaneously with frigid spit.
The desert is not as nasty as I once thought. It is the schoolyard bully who makes all cower, yet has a soft, sentimental side that must be sought out from the shadows of surrounding walls.
I am cool, clean, and collected.
The harsh desert has been washed from my body and mind.
Since my fall it is no longer that simple.
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An Honest Morning Weather Report
HMMMMmmmmmmmmm………
It still seems dark out…….
Oh. I guess I am still in my bag with eyes closed.
(YAWN!!!) Is it time? Should I open an eye?.......?
Is that the breakfast bell?.......? No……Just pots. Pots clanging.
Hmmmmmrrr….Alright….One eye….Come on….
Open!
Oh ok, I’m wrong. Light and cloudless. It will be another blindingly sunny day…………..and I have to get up?? Ohhhhhhh but sleep! It’s so enjoyable…….
Eerrrrrrrrrrr……….
Ok Jonathan, you can get up, you’ve done it once or twice before…..Its not that hard….
OK
Now! Don’t curl up at the bottom of your warm bag, get up, meet the sunny day, its not that cold. Come on, there is no place to hide.
O.K.
UP!!
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The Weather of Colors
And there it is, the suns’ bright orange cover, tucked under that of dark blue of nighttime. It is a sight only seen as it is pulled over in the evening or thrown off in the morning as the sun rises from its slumber.
The sky above me now is blue and clear, beckoning me in for a swim. I think about it for a moment and — as I prepare to jump — I am stayed by a soft voice in my head. Blue and clear in the desert is a synonym for death – for a clean pool in the desert is by no means clean, harboring chemical agents of living destruction.
Water, I now find, had bedded on top of my sleeping back during the night – now reflecting the lighter colors of the roof overhead. With one shake these brilliant beads leap into the air — pause at the height of their assent, showing off their colors to their lone admirer — and are quickly gone.
I now rise fro my bag.
Slowly and gracefully.
The sun follows my lead.
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The Shock of Place
New to the desert, I thought there would be little chance of finding a moment in this dry climate that would send me back to a point in my childhood – a place that especially here seems so far away. It was a childhood filled with green and blue; plants and bodies of water – not simmering red rocks.
I took off my sandals, exposing my bare white feet to an environment the color of dried blood and a surface that retains temperature so thoroughly. I stood with my feet on this hot stone – letting them relish in the warmth permeating upwards. Then, when they had had enough, when I could no longer stand the temperature I, with one quick movement, flung my feet under the shade of a small desert plant – not three feet tall – and shocked them with the cool stone underneath that had been shaded by this small shrub.
It was a shock I had felt before.
And then…
Time stopped and darted backwards.
I was 9 and standing on an asphalt road in the summer sun. Melina Ave was the name given to this pathway in the 1960’s when it was carved out of farmland, most likely by a member of the Dayton Ohio department of public works. Much of this area when I was 9 was still covered by farmland where today exist many copies of Melina Ave. In my right hand hung a pair of red-rimmed, full face swimming goggles that would regularly save my nose from inhaling what it was not supposed to. Around my neck was slung a black inner tube that matched my four-foot frame. Large green lawns bracketed me with the occasional tree. Mostly the sky was unobstructed.
As my white feet pattered down this road they were accompanied by four more. Two of my three younger brothers, David and Benjamin, all of us separated by two years, followed behind. My youngest – Michael – was still in the arms of my mother back at our grandparents – her parents – house up the street. We had spent three weeks at this house every summer since I was in my mother’s arms until I was 13. For my mother, these three weeks were a time of constant care taking. Early on it was us kids that she would juggle with the skill of a trained circus performer. Then as her parents aged they took our place in our mom’s arms.
At the dead end of Melina Ave was a one-story brick house inhabited by an elderly couple and friends of my grand parents. And, luckily for us young ones, they had a swimming pool.
My feet on this journey down would regularly overheat and send my skinny nine-year-old frame scurrying onto nearby green grass for necessary relief. My younger brothers would not follow. They took great joy in their extreme tolerance of burning ground – a quality not held by their older brother – and walked the full quarter mile to the pool on this substance to one-up him.
Every time I embarked upon the journey to the pool I would try to withstand the pain. I never could. Always, though, in the end, the three of us would end up in the same place with the same reward –cool blue comfort.
The memories of these walks and waters have long been absent from my mind. Yet a quick, unexpected shock from desert rocks meshed place and moved time. The desert is, my mind has realized, intricately connected to newly recalled and treasured moments from a long-passed childhood. Moments that makeup a small part of who I am.
I am, not new to the desert. Highly variant temperatures, a wide-open sky, and an ambiance that soothes my soul are not novel. Here I have finished a leg of my journey through sparse lands and found rewards in the realization and comfort of bridges of time and place.
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