Refuge in the Hi-Desert

(January 12, 2025) 130 miles east of Los Angeles, “hi desert” serves to distinguish the Morongo Basin region of the Mojave Desert from another region ~80miles northwest known as the “high desert.” In spite of this highly esoteric and unpronounced dissimilarity, both “hi-“ and “high” desert refer to the altitude (2,000-4,000ft above sea level) of the local desert, which further distinguishes a place like Landers(3,100ft) from nearby “Low Desert” towns like Palm Springs (500ft). Certainly the topography seems fairly straightforward from LA: mostly flat or slow rollers along the San Gabriel mountains which blend into the San Bernardino mountains, past the Morongo Reservation (most visibly the casino) and steeply down into the Low Desert before turning east and steeply up again into the Morongo Basin. Apparently, this whole region seems like something of an ecotone between the Mojave to the northeast and west (including places like Death Valley) and the lower Colorado-Sonoran desert, which reaches well south into Baja, Mexico, and the Gulf of California, or Hutsiparipay’yaah (Chemehuevi etymology according to George Laird is htsipa “ocean” plus timpa “mouth,” or “where the land is like a mouth to catch the water”).

Currently we’re staying in Landers at a generous friend of a friend’s house. The winter winds range from a whistle to a roar on the roof over us. The power company out here is shutting off the power in the mid-Am and mid-Pm. Which is slightly inconvenient but also strikes us as fairly wise, especially as we learned recently that the Eaton Canyon fire which destroyed our home and most of Altadena this past Tuesday evening was likely sparked by SoCal Edison Electric’s pylons. 

Is a fire begun by electrical pylons truly a “wild fire”? For those like ourselves, desperately searching to make meaning of the fires’ material devastation, SoCal Edison seems like an obvious candidate to assume responsibility. Nevermind that as your stereotypical corporate power, they already deny all negligence or responsibility. How about connecting the dots that over-consumption of resources like electricity, water, gas, etc plays for all Southern California? Who’s willing to take responsibility for our colonial resource-extraction and land management? 

Perhaps to begin by grasping how the land isn’t dead, and how it still lives in the ashes? This Univ of CA page offers a curative glimpse of California indigenous ‘cultural burn’ techniques, as does the video below. The North Fork Mono still burn off low-lying brush such as all the shrubby fuel-stuff that grew out of the last two years’ super-blooms (results of recent years’ atmospheric rivers and 2023’s unusual hurricane). More to come…