Two years ago, my daughter and I headed out for a hike to one of our longtime favorite desert places, Cottonwood Oasis in Joshua Tree National Park.
To our surprise, not only was the parking lot at
the trailhead full, but cars were spilling out along the roadway. In 30 years
of hiking there, I’d never seen that before.
I learned later that spring that the Park, already
listed as one of the most endangered of all National Parks, has experienced a
huge uptick in visitors in the last few years, a number that continues to
increase.
Unfortunately, I have realized that exponential
increases in tourism to our region aren’t limited to Joshua Tree National Park:
it’s desert-wide.
Maybe this wouldn’t hit so hard if I didn’t have to
endure gridlock traffic on Interstate 10, and even Highway 111 for most of the
month of April, the result of the Coachella and Stagecoach festivals,
wildflower season, and all manner of other large-scale festivals, events and
wildflower super blooms.
Maybe I wouldn’t be so annoyed if I hadn’t been
rudely “asked” recently to move out of the way at Tahquitz falls by a group of tourists
who wanted to take a group selfie to post on Instagram.
Maybe I’d be in a better mood if I hadn’t had to
fight for parking at Thrush Park last spring to get past the hordes of visitors
gawking at Desert X artwork – a months-long installation last spring (due to
return in 2019) that included large art pieces across a 50-mile span of desert
- just to go on an after-work hike.
There’s a disturbing implication afoot that this
desert is up for grabs for any and all takers who want to profit financially or
otherwise from our open spaces and quickly-vanishing sense of solitude and
peace.
It’s the type of land grab mentality that evokes
the worst of the California Gold Rush.
It’s the type of land grab that’s caused, in the
past decade, large-scale, multinational renewable energy entities and investors
– backed by the federal government – salivating to get their hands on open
tracts of our surrounding desert lands. Eastern Riverside County is one of the
most targeted-areas.
It’s the type of land grab that has allowed
well-funded, large-scale culture and arts organizations to site their projects
here where they please, seemingly without adequate environmental impact reviews
and in highly sensitive areas.
It’s a mentality has allowed Coachella’s producer,
Goldenvoice, to trademark the very name of this valley and use legal means to
stop any person or entity use the name “Coachella” or even the word “chella” for
to anything that might be associated with an event or product for sale.
Do I now live in a desert whose very name, and
soul, has, by dint of its mostly-rural and therefore economically desirable vulnerabilities,
been commodified, at the desert’s expense?
It’s starting to feel more and more like
Disneyland; a sort of designer desert. I’ve lived and worked in the California
deserts for most of my life. I didn’t sign up for this.
In the meantime, just down the road, the Salton Sea
disappears and the ancient aquifer at Cadiz is on the verge of being siphoned
dry, both victims of water-greedy urban municipalities 100 miles away.
I can’t blame people for wanting to spend time in
this stunning desert. It’s a world-class place, and offers what I’ve cherished
for the past twenty years of living here full time: open spaces,
transformational view sheds, and unfolding scenic mysteries, as well as a close
sense of a vital, ancient past.
I have this in common with every person who seeks
refuge here as an antidote to less-inspired places: I love the desert.
But I can’t help but ask a question that keeps
nagging at me:
Are we loving the desert to death?
