Water - and the Radicalization of an Easterner

Kings Pool - Restored Spring at Ash Meadows

If I had a shot of whiskey for every time in the last few months, the months we've been traveling out west, when someone told me, "Whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fighting over" I'd have been drunk half the time.

And while it's a foreign concept back East, it does appear that water out west is for "fighting over." It's certainly something I've been thinking a lot about, pretty much ever since we crossed the Missouri River in South Dakota.  Not so much the fighting, or the whiskey, but the water.

From July through October it was all about the drought. And while folks seemed less than happy when rain was in the forecast, they mostly talked about snow pack. Water out west, generally doesn't

Irrigation Control Gate

come from the sky, it comes from the ground and from rivers. The rivers and aquafer get charged by the winter snows high in the mountains. Up and down the west coast, from the Cascades of Oregon through the Sierra's of California, there hadn't been much if any snow for the last two winters. Lakes were low, rivers only a trickle. People were arguing about where they should get more water. Could they dig deeper wells? What about cutting back on the dam releases? Sure the Salmon might die but the crops would be watered...and so on. 

Meanwhile the concept of water conservation seems total foreign. Farmers and ranchers are irrigating crops mid-day, spraying the precious water into the air, half of which evaporates in the dry air before reaching even plant leaves, let alone the roots. Where they don't spray they rely on the ancient and inefficient practice of flood irrigation. Cheap to install and maintain, but highly inefficient water use. The town aren't much better. Desert dwellers water suburban lawns, have no idea of what a low flush toilet even looks like, refill their pools daily and don't own covers that would cut down on evaporative loss.

On the Eastern side of the Sierras, in the Owens valley, 120 miles from Los Angeles we learned more and more about the ecological devastation caused by the Los Angeles water grab. It was a hard, sad read but "Cadillac Desert" lays out the story of how water from the Sierra's, the Colorado River, etc has all been diverted from their original courses and sent on to agriculture and far away cities like Los Angeles and Phoenix. From looking out the car window we could also see how so much of that
water was just wasted. It was a drought, but more than half of the water was still just wasted! Sometimes I needed that whiskey just to calm down.

The Endemic Ash Meadows Sunray

And then, in October, we came to Ash Meadows, walked into the bathroom and read an Edward Abbey quote on the wall:

"There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount , a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be."

Hayduke rides again! After living at Ash Meadows for two and a half months, western water issues are even more obvious - and even more worth fighting over. Ash Meadows is a wildlife refuge located along the Amargosa River watershed, and on top of miles-long faults.  It was created in the mid 1980's to save the very special ecosystem created by water in the desert. The result is 50 natural, mostly warm springs pumping out 11,000 gallons of water per minute. 50 little oasis-es and their resultant outflow streams. Along with the endemic and endangered pupfish there are 27 endemic species, plants and animals found nowhere else in the world.  All in the Mohave desert. Ash Meadows is really all about water.

What could have been - this alone makes
me want to drink

But not everyone is thrilled about the refuge or its "waste" of water. Locals resent the loss of 20 farm jobs, and/or the lost income from a potential housing development. There have been and continue to be campaigns against the refuge (and other wildlife refuges, national forests, national parks, etc). A "Kill the Pupfish" bumpersticker was produced - by the local town commissioner. Like the spotted owl for the lumber industry, the pupfish are the anti-symbol of agri-business. The feeling seems to be, if there's water here, people have the right to use/waste it. To hell with the species that have occupied the land for the past thousands of years, to hell with biological diversity.

Living at Ash Meadows, and being out West have changed all that for me. If some says that the need to pump all the water out of the springs for a few jobs, the ability to flood the desert or spray water into the air and grow some crop that would more economically be raised elsewhere is greater than the need to set aside precious acres in order to let special, endemic species live and to allow  people from all over to world to enjoy the beauty of the springs and appreciate the diversity of the unique environment, not to mention giving those rare and endemic species a safe place to thrive. Then I say - pass the whiskey, them's fighting words.

Nevada Crayfish Boil: Save the Pupfish

Both pricey delicacies and bug-like garbage eaters, crustaceans are weird creatures, but tasty. Lobster, the most well known of the family, crawl along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Eating anything their big fat claws come upon, including garbage and other lobsters, they only come up in lobster traps and are thankfully, promptly boiled.

Crayfish, a smaller member of the crustacean family that originates in warm southern waters, are lobster's smaller cousins. The eponymous star of the Crayfish boil, Louisiana supplies 95% of the crayfish sold in the United States. In 2007, the Louisiana crayfish harvest was about 54,800 tons, almost all of it from aquaculture. Crayfish were introduced to the warm springs and outflows of Ash Meadows in the early twentieth century. Strangely enough they weren't introduced as a human food source but as food for the introduced bullfrogs. Bullfrog legs were popular in Las Vegas and since bullfrogs eat anything and eat a lot, the populations of endemic pupfish and speckled dace weren't enough to fatten then up. Enterprising farmers introduced the fast reproducing crayfish (which also eat pupfish and dace) to feed the introduced bullfrogs.

Restoration efforts have been very successful in bringing back the pupfish and speckled dace, and

relatively successful in eradicating the bullfrog. Crayfish, not so much. A few days ago I stood on the boardwalk alongside the Crystal Spring outflow and watched helplessly as a crayfish took down, and ate a beautiful blue pupfish. And that brings us to Cold Springs.

Located close to the center of the Ash Meadows National Wildlife refuge, between the eastern mountains and the western Carson Slough, Cold Spring is far from the fault line from which the warmer springs rise. Possibly that's why the water from this spring isn't warm. It's cold, and hence the name. Never-the-less the spring still pumps out huge amounts of water into the desert and as such was a prime candidate for human appropriation. Sometime in the mid 1960s the spring head was enclosed in concrete reservoir, pumps were installed and any native fish life was pumped out onto the alfalfa fields.

Today Cold Spring's water is no longer used for agriculture, but the spring has not yet been restored. The water flows up out of the earth and into that concrete box. The box is crumbling, full of wind blown dirt, lumber, algae and crayfish. Lots of ugly, fat pupfish-eating crayfish. Looking into that murky water, seeing those beady eyes, and spindly pincers wave menacingly back, I thought of the only appropriate response. Nevada Crayfish Boil!

A Night at the Opera - Ash Meadows, a Cultural Meca

What do opera, Edward Abbey, robot girlfriends, and international travelers all have in common? If you guessed Ash Meadows, you're right!

Last Wednesday night we went to the opera. Yup there is an opera house here, a mere 15 minutes drive to Death Valley Junction, CA. The Amargosa Opera House was founded in 1967 in the former social hall of Pacific Coast Borax Company by a professional dancer from New York.

The performance we saw wasn't actually an opera however. It was a solo ballet pantomime and a very memorable experience. Also memorable was the inside of the Opera House itself. Painted by Marta, the dancer from New York, the walls are pictures of an 16th century audience. It's a surreal experience to be watching a ballerina perform with a renaissance audience, in the social hall, of a Borax Company, in the middle of no where, in the Mohave desert.

Marta's first performance at the Opera House was in 1968. During that year and the prior one, 

Edward Abbey was writing the final chapters of Desert Solitaire  "in a bar serving a legal house of prostitution at Ash Meadows, Nevada." Less than 10 miles from Marta. The bar was at Ash Meadows Sky Ranch. Consisting of a small motel, bar, brothel and as often accompanies Nevada brothels, an air strip, the Ranch was a popular desert oasis. The brothel and resort closed in the 70s and the land was eventually enveloped by the Refuge. There is no official access, but occasional refuge employees and volunteers do check up on it.

And then there is Cherry 2000. Soon after Sky Ranch closed a film crew showed up to make a movie. Cherry 2000 is a B-rated sci-fi movie, starring Melodie Griffin. The plot is pretty silly for an action movie: "In the year 2017, a rich man travels to the ends of the earth to find that the perfect woman is always under his nose." But hey, it was still filmed here. We haven't seen the movie yet, but the popcorn is ready.


And then there is today's international appeal of Ash Meadows. A little less than half of the visitors come from countries other than the United States. Last week alone we talked to travelers from Japan, Australia, Germany, Canada, and Brazil. It's great to hear about their enthusiasm for the Pupfish, the Meadows, and how much they appreciate the preserved and wide open spaces of the United States.

When you come right down to it, it is the wilderness, or at best the preserved and shared wide open spaces that are one of our greatest cultural treasures.

Volunteer Life - In the Desert

Sunset Over Ash Meadows

This morning it occurred to me that the closest Starbucks, even the closest latte-serving coffee shop is more than 30-40 minutes away.  Less than a year ago, just to get to work, I passed 6 Dunkin Donuts, 4 Starbucks, 3 Au Bon Pains and countless local cafes.

Ash Meadows National Wildlife Refuge, where we're volunteering is located along the Nevada / California border, 30-40 minutes from the closest town, and 31 miles from Death Valley National Park. The refuge is home to, and famous for, being the home of several endemic species including the Devil's Hole and Ash Meadows Pupfish. The Refuge tag line reads "Where the desert springs to life."  I prefer - "Come for the Pupfish, Stay for the Springs".  Sure the pupfish are cute, but there are 50 crystal clear warm springs here putting out a total of 11,000 gallons a minute, and they all are amazing! Some are

Crystal Spring

accessible by boardwalks, some are hidden away in the folds of the rolling desert hills. But again, all-in-all an amazing oasis in the middle of the Mohave desert.

Volunteer life, even without lattes, is pretty sweet. This morning I woke up, took a walk alongside a desert stream, and strolled 3 minutes to 'work' at the Ash Meadows Interpretive Center.  Yesterday I helped collect pupfish DNA samples next to a crystal clear, hot spring. 

Inquiring minds have asked for more details on exactly what it is we are doing, so here it is.  For the months of January and February (and if I can convince SD) some of March we will be living and volunteering at the Ash Meadows Wildlife Refuge in Southern Nevada.  Volunteering requires that we work three, eight hour days (Thursday, Friday and Saturday). During that time we are responsible for staffing the visitor center as well as keeping it clean.  Once a week we also empty trash, recycling and clean pit toilets at the boardwalks.  On slow days we can also get out on the refuge and help with habitat rehabilitation projects, maintenance or just do roving interpretation.

Longstreet Cabin and our New Bikes!

The four other days of the week we get to explore. There is a lot to see and do on the Refuge, and our new mountain bikes were the perfect addition to help us do that. There are miles of dirt roads through the rolling hills. Even on our first day here we took a quick ride up to the Longstreet Cabin and Spring. Less than 4 miles to the north of the trailer pad the spring and cabin have both been restored. The cabin being built more than a hundred years ago is one of the oldest structures in the Amargosa Valley. The Spring, like many others here. had been destroyed by over pumping and aggressive irrigation in the 60's and 70's.  With the establishment of the refuge in the 80's and the subsequent projects to bring back the springs and provide living habitat for the endemic Amargosa pupfish, Longstreet spring was restored in the second round of projects, about 10 years ago. Today it, along with Kings Pool, and Crystal Spring and the three gems of the refuge. Riding to Longstreet the first day was the perfect introduction to the Refuge.

In addition to exploring Ash Meadows, there is also many places within a two to three drive that we

Dates - really for harvest

also want to check out including  Death Valley, Red Rocks Canyon, and Desert National Wildlife Refuge. For our first trip we drove about 50 miles south to the China Date Ranch. While the name conjures images of cowboys rounding up four legged fruits, the 'ranch' is really a date plantation. Everything around here is a ranch, even the brothels are called ranches. The Date Ranch is located in a hidden valley of the Amargosa River. The river creates a lush habitat for dates and for all desert plants and animals. We took a brief walk along the riverside trail. It's still winter here and most everything is dormant but it was wonderful. The dates are really cool too, and some were still being harvested. The ranch shop had about 8 different date varieties all available for sampling. They were all good. Some would be better for cooking, and some were sweeter, juicier and excellent just as they were. We had planned to get lunch a little cafe in Shoshone, CA but the day we went was the day of the 1.3 billion dollar powerball and the parking lot (and the entire town) was packed with cars of people buying tickets. The line must have been 1/3 of a mile long. With stomachs still full of dates we headed home for a late lunch.

It's coyote time!

And where is home you ask?  We are living in our trailer on a trailer pad at the refuge. There is another couple here and occasionally government folks stay in the bunkhouse next door. The bunkhouse has a washer and dryer which we can use. There is a TV but no cable. There is also wifi, both in the bunk house and in our trailer. At night, heck even during the day it's quiet. Sometimes the coyotes get a little loud but SD enjoys their company.  I enjoy the quiet. The sunsets, sunrises, surrounding mountains and desert continually surprise us with their beauty.