Arizona's 5th C: Conflict?

Site of the proposed Rosemont Copper Mine in the
Santa Rita Mountains, 30 miles south of Tucson, AZ.

When I was in fourth grade, I remember learning about the 3 C's of Arizona's economy: cotton, copper, and cattle (and oh, the havoc those three have wreaked). At the time, I didn't understand why so much fuss was made over this; I'm not sure anyone really made a true effort to explain economics to fourth graders, and I don't blame them, since I'm hard pressed to understand any of it today. I did know that many of my not-so-distant Arizona relatives - people that I met at family reunions, people who wore cowboy boots and smoked Marlboros on the back porch - really! - were either ranchers or miners, and when I thought of them I inevitably felt the romantic pull of a notion I had, impossible to articulate but very real, of my family as makers of the Wild West.

In recent years, I've heard that a 4th C has been added: climate. Our lovely winter weather draws retirees' Winnebagos to Arizona like lumbering moths to a flame, and fueled a frenzy of building and development that only the near-collapse of the domestic economy could slow - which it did. But that doesn't mean that the other three C's are gone; in fact, yesterday I attended a Forest Service hearing regarding the draft environmental impact statement for the development of the Rosemont Copper mine, 30 miles southeast of Tucson in the Santa Rita mountain range.

I attended the hearing to speak out against this mine, and I did so. But it wasn't without acknowledgment of the complexity of this issue, which I feel is often lost as both sides batten down the hatches and prepare for a war in which the other side not only has no claim to legitimacy, but is morally repugnant. As much as I oppose the mine itself, I have to acknowledge that those who support it are simply coming from a different perspective - they are not necessarily scientifically illiterate morons, as the anti-mine crowd seemed to perceive (ok, so there's a high level of scientific illiteracy happening, but that doesn't make those who suffer from it morons, or somehow inherently less valuable humans than the rest of us).

There are plenty of reasons to oppose this project. It would destroy a large swath of the Santa Ritas, one of the least-trammeled ranges in southern Arizona. It would have unpredictable consequences for the watershed, including reducing groundwater levels and the flow of springs that feed important riparian areas throughout the range (well, the only thing that's unpredictable is how much impact the mine will actually have; there's no question that it will be highly destructive.) In a regional economy that currently brings in millions of dollars from tourism, the mine would destroy land of significant scenic, biological, and recreational value. The list goes on and on. I heard several interesting arguments during the hearing yesterday, one from a former mining engineer, saying that the copper vein that is to be mined is weak, and that the project is doomed to failure for many technical reasons that I wish I understood.

The argument for the mine, of course, is jobs. In an economy where the real estate, construction, and development industries have all crashed, Arizona's 4th C is no longer working out so well. And so the lure of copper once again has a hold on us - mining can provide jobs, and copper is an increasingly valuable commodity due to its use in high-tech applications. I fully acknowledge that without copper, I wouldn't be typing on a computer right now. I wouldn't have been able to drive a car to the hearing yesterday. We all use the products of these extractive industries, so how can we actually reconcile opposing them in our own backyards?

Then there's the uncomfortable question of what I can only think to call a kind of class warfare around these issues. Overwhelmingly, though not without exception, those who spoke out against the mine were well-educated, well-off folks who opposed the project on environmental grounds or because it threatened their way of life, which often involved a ranchette where they had retired a few years before to run a few horses and open a bed-and-breakfast. Those who spoke in support of the mine did so because it would support their jobs - for example, a trucking company brought in a busload of their employees who would be hired to truck copper away from the mine. The privilege of opposing these projects belongs to the wealthier folks in our society, or at least those of us whose jobs don't rely on these types of industries. And who are we to try to argue that habitat is more important that jobs?

Despite these complications, I still oppose this mine, mostly because it seems to cost so much for so little (or unpredictable) potential benefit. Assuming a cost-benefit analysis could accurately value things like habitat and scenic beauty, I feel confident that the costs of the project would outweigh the benefits. The deeper conflict is how to find alternatives to the cultural and economic paradigms that require such a heavy toll in terms of natural resource extraction, and deeper still seems to be the divide between worldviews represented at the hearing yesterday. The people around me were dismissive and demeaning towards those who spoke in favor of the mine; I have no doubt that the other side of the room snickered when I talked about the threats to riparian habitat. After all, what use is a bird when there's no food on the table?

Letter to My Future Self

Dear Self,

I write this on the evening of your first wedding anniversary, May 30, 2011. I don't know what you're doing, but I do know who you are, and I like to imagine that your dreams have shifted and grown in ways so unpredictable to me that I'd be surprised by many things about you and pleased that all the good parts have stayed the same. But promise me this: that you have done your best to love him more, and better, every day. That you remember all the reasons that drew you together in the first place.

Yes, you love hiking together, and riding bikes, and badly describing distant birds. And you probably have even more connecting the two of you now: hopefully you will have made some children together, those mysterious beings of the future; though now they seem the strange opposite of ghosts. And yes, there is probably a house, and careers, and no doubt there has been an ongoing series of poorly behaved cats.

But Self, remember that you love the stories he tells you. Remember that you met along a river in the most beautiful place in the world. Remember the nighthawks that hunted overhead when you revisited that place on your honeymoon. How the two of you just watched as they fell through the clean desert air again and again, so close you could feel the rush of their wings. How the faint smell of water blew in on the juniper wind. How the two of you sat for hours, it seemed, without really speaking, because you knew it was special, even as you knew it wasn't: the show happened every night whether the two of you were present or not. It was a chance brush with the world, a convergence of beings, much like your meeting. You looked up at those nighthawks from a shared point on earth. May you have never stopped looking.

Birdwatching the Urban Jungle

One of my favorite things about walking, running, and biking around Tucson is sighting birds. This afternoon as I biked home from work, I spotted a great blue heron flapping along toward Himmel Park, its wing beats long and leisurely like a bird with nothing but time for enjoying the gorgeous March day. The same flicker was singing his heart out on the same tree where I noticed him this morning, which was not long after I saw a Gila woodpecker scaling a mesquite tree on University Boulevard. This was not an atypical number of sightings (and those were just the ones that stood out) during my 8-mile round trip bike commute, especially this time of year, when, despite relatively chilly nights, spring threatens every day to burst forth in all its gaudy desert glory.

For me, the pleasure of bird sightings in the city stems from my perpetual surprise at them. Tucson is, in some ways, a barren place, and I say that as someone who loves desert vegetation and loves this city. But we have approximately 1% tree canopy cover here, compared with a national average of 25%, and even though our desert trees may naturally create less cover than more lush vegetation elsewhere... that's still pretty pathetic. Our urban forest could definitely stand to be enhanced (for more on those efforts, check out Watershed Management Group and Trees for Tucson).

So it is always a surprise when, as I make my way through the exhaust-filled, pavement-covered, largely shade-free urban landscape, having nearly forgotten that I do in fact share this environment with something besides my fellow humans and their cars, the shocking red of a cardinal or a vermilion flycatcher literally stops me in my tracks. Or a red-tailed hawk alights on a telephone pole, fluffs its feathers, and screams its wildness across a deserted parking lot. These are the small miracles that transcend the ordinary workings of my day, that transport me, that keep me from looking down and hating the grime of the city, and instead looking up and feeling, briefly, the freedom of its winged inhabitants.  The birds do not judge, they just are.

Nature is so very resilient if we give it the slightest chance. There are many people working in Tucson - and in so many other places - to bring nature back into our urban spaces. It is vital to our health as humans and to our awareness of other species that we see nature as something that we are a part of, not something we go on an eco-vacation to see, but rather something that is present in our everyday urban lives, inseparable from us and impacted by us. The countless benefits of this extend to both ourselves and the species that we help to thrive, and I like to think that the biggest one is simply that the presence of nature can remind us, daily, if only for a moment, that we too can be wild and free.

Reflections: Organ Pipe National Monument

A small tinaja, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, AZ.

A raven is cruising the campground, sweeping by and landing with trills and squawks and all manner of raven-speak. They are one of my favorite birds - so iconically Southwestern, they always make me think of the wild desert places I've visited, lived in, loved. Where do they find water here? Come to think of it, where do the many birds here - Gila woodpeckers, Northern flickers, cactus wrens, desert quail - find water? They're here, so it's somewhere. But apparently it's easier to find on two wings than on two feet.

Craig Childs writes about this general area in his book, The Secret Knowledge of Water (he focuses on Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, which is just west of Organ Pipe). He has traveled through many arid places, always on foot, in search of water, and in this region he says you must go to the mountains to find it, where it is stored in tinajas, or waterpockets within the rock. If you just understand the lay of the land, the geographic circumstances required for such catchment, you will find it. This knowledge has been passed on, from generations of indigenous people and even to Spanish missionaries like Father Kino, who explored a large portion of this region in the early 1700s. But now, people cross this desert under dire circumstances and can't find water, because they don't know where to look for it. It can't be found along what seems to be the path of least resistance: the mesquite flats crisscrossed by dry washes that flash during storms only briefly, and then only a few times a year. The water is stored in the mountains, but to traverse them would make an already difficult journey both longer and more dangerous.

For all the beauty of this place, it has become impossible to ignore what's happening along the border. As we drove back from a hike yesterday, we came across at least a dozen Border Patrol vehicles, parked at angles along the dirt road, not an agent to be seen. Clearly they were out on foot. Any consideration for the fragile ecosystem is lost completely in the pursuit of those who, at best, simply wish to pursue economic opportunities that are made readily available to them once they cross the border, and at worst, are smuggling drugs that current US policies have made highly profitable.

Of course, the impact on the ecosystem, though at the forefront of my own mind having just hiked through it, pales in comparison to the crisis of violence and meaningless suffering that currently pervades the borderlands. I am often struck when hiking in this area, comfy in my synthetic, wicking clothing and three-liter Camelbak full of cool water, by the level of desperation that would motivate someone to cross this landscape in the summer, in the dark, in second-hand tennis shoes and with a gallon jug of water painted black to avoid detection. It's an unimaginable journey. (I should say that I'm referring here to migrant workers, not drug smugglers - that's a whole different issue.)

I sometimes long to just forget it all, to see this place as one of simple and immense beauty, and not as symbolic of a conflict born of economic disparity, in which I am both complicit and on the privileged side. I want the natural world to transcend the muck of human affairs, and I want it to take me with it. And yet, that would be deny the interconnectedness of all things: of humans to the natural world and of it to us; of me to the Gila woodpecker and of the migrant to me. And so here we are in the muck, without answers, except the knowledge that the paradox of pain and beauty represented by such a place is surely one small, inescapable piece of being human.

Things I'm loving right now...

The only relationship among the following things is that I'm thinking about them. Stream-of-consciousness, not quite Faulkner style, but fun nonetheless. (And not nearly as much work, I hope, for the readers, or for the writer!)

1) Getting rid of asphalt and planting trees. I have an awesome job at Watershed Management Group, and yesterday we installed stormwater harvesting basins (actually, we used underground infiltration chambers fed by round "cores" cut in the side of the curb, so that stormwater will flow in as it goes down the street). Someday I'll write about the technical details of this, but the bottom line is, we got to plant native trees and grasses where there used to be only asphalt, and those plants will be fed by the stormwater that is normally treated as a waste product. Bringing nature back into cities is one of the major reasons I went into urban planning, and I feel so lucky that I get to do it in my work.

2) Blind Descent, by James M. Tabor, about the exploration of "supercaves" - really big caves that people spend days (and weeks of in-and-out expeditions) exploring. It's truly unimaginable. As a scuba diver, sometime-canyoneer, and sporadic rock climber, I can relate to a lot of the things these cavers are doing - except I think that's a little like saying that because you've run a mile, you can relate to what it would be like to run in the Olympics. They are climbing, backpacking, diving, rappelling, sleeping on Porta-ledges... in the cold, wet, and dark. Not just dark, but in the absolute absence of light. Oh yeah, and in the constantly gusting wind creating by these huge caves. If you're into reading about the limits of the human experience, I highly recommend it.

While on the topic of books, I also just finished Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow by Orson Scott Card. I don't consider myself much of science fiction person, but these books transcend the genre. Card is a master of plot and pacing, and I once again found myself astonished at how people can sit down and write fiction.

3) The fact that the hubs has started homebrewing again, filling the house with the warm smell of yeast and the promise of delicious beer in a few short weeks.

4) The hummingbirds that I've been seeing around town (they're back, I guess?), as well as the resident vermilion flycatcher we spotted this morning in the park across the street. Just the name vermilion flycatcher makes me happy.

5) Our plans to check out the Whitewater Draw Wildlife Area and the sandhill cranes tomorrow - pictures soon, I hope!