The Yuma Desert

My relationship with the desert has always been an uneasy one. It has the misfortune of being the biome in which I was raised and therefore the one I appreciated the least. Growing up in Arizona, it was always a little too bright, too hot, too expansive. It is a challenging environment for humanity and only becoming more perilous with climate change.

Sand dunes to the West of Yuma near a border patrol checkpoint. Photo by: Abi Gill

My hometown, Yuma, Arizona, is located in the Sonoran Desert and radiates out from the Colorado river near California east to the foothills of nearby mountains and south nearly all the way to the US-Mexico border. Given the generally conservative population it is unsurprising to find attitudes towards our international borders lean towards increased security. According to a CNN article written by Priscilla Alvarez and Anna-Maja Rappard last December, migration to the US through the Yuma area led to Border Patrol arresting nearly 22,000 people in October of 2021. This was a massive increase from earlier in the year, consisting of mostly middle class people from Latin America seeking an escape from instability worsened by covid or making use of the less aggressive border attitudes this administration holds (Alvarez and Rappard). Migration from central America will only increase with projections from Abrahm Lustgarten’s article “The Great Climate Migration Has Begun” suggesting that by 2080, 6.7 million more people could be moving northwards towards the US because of changing climatic conditions. With the prediction that by 2070, 19% of the planet will be unlivably hot, it’s clear that this migration will be absolutely necessary to preserve

Blooming creosote and mountains to the East of Yuma. Photo by: Abi Gill

human life (Lustgarten). What is also clear is that our border policies and policies regarding the absorption and support of migrants and increasingly climate refugees, matter greatly. If the patrolling response in near Yuma or the resistance to providing water to migrants Rubén Martínez details in “Desert America” are anything to go by, we are on the wrong track. Martínez does however provide the example of Mike Wilson, an O’odham activist who cites a moral imperative as his reasoning for bringing water into the desert for migrants against the wishes of officials within his tribe. Wilson’s focus on doing what is right (i.e. everything he can to prevent unnecessary death) points us in a better direction with more of the flexibility and generosity that will be needed to handle future influxes of climate refugees.

An egret seen in West Wetland Park near the Colorado River. Photo by: Abi Gill

I find it ultimately ironic that those of us living on the US side of the desert would begrudge others access to a more welcoming climate when many of us will have to migrate away from the southwest soon enough. Temperatures here already exceed 100 degrees essentially every day of the summer and range up to around 120 for the worst stretches. I can still remember the first time I experienced heat exhaustion after a recess at the age of nine. Even though we are still in winter now, I make sure not to go out into the desert until after peak sunlight times because avoiding the sun in Yuma is by necessity ingrained in my behavioral patterns. Excessive heat is already a reality here and only due to get worse, all while we continue to deplete the river that

A canal running through the city of Yuma near my home. Photo by: Abi Gill

gives us life. Yuma, like many other cities in the west, relies heavily on irrigation canals branching off the Colorado to support its primarily agricultural economy. 70 percent of water delivered from the Colorado River as a whole goes towards crop production (Lustgarten), and that is readily visible throughout my hometown and especially at the end of the hike I went on a couple weeks ago.

Hikers pictured from midway up the trail. Photo by: Abi Gill

Telegraph pass is located directly adjacent to interstate 8 heading east out of the Yuma. It is

easily the best known and most heavily trafficked trail near town, popular among populations ranging from highschoolers with nothing better to do on the weekend to retirees who make the hike nearly every day. It is also one of the only places in the city where I always say hello to passersby. Similar to a sentiment Gretel Ehrlich expressed in “The Solace of Open Spaces,” there is a clear etiquette to the trail, “...good-naturedness is concomitant with severity. Friendliness is a tradition. Strangers passing on the road wave hello.” The hike is split into two portions, a lower unpaved trail from a frontage road to the base of the mountain and a steep access road to the top. All told it’s around five miles up and back with an elevation gain of roughly 1,300 feet. It isn’t an easy hike, in fact, I’ve always found it to be almost prohibitively difficult. At around the halfway point there is a nice stopping point sometimes referred to as the rock of shame where many turn back without finishing the climb. It's in that difficulty that I think we find our commonality. All of us strangers with varying stories going into the desert to spend our time become supportive and friendly in our shared pursuit. This last time I heard a loud shout behind me during the initial walk from the highway and when I turned to see where it had come from I saw two friends laughing. As they passed me they apologized for startling me and said they came out to the desert to relieve stress, hiking and yelling in nature. This time of year some wildflowers were in bloom adding a little extra

A blooming desert globemallow and a bee. Photo by: Abi Gill

color into the landscape, but what you really hike this trail to see is the view from the top of the valleys on either side. It’s a greener landscape than one might expect due to the irrigation and cultivation of countless fields on either side. Cropland uses up much of the Colorado’s water, and while the importance of farming cannot be overstated, it’s clear that we may be going about farming excessively water-intensive settings.

The view of the next valley from the top of Telegraph Pass. Photo by: Abi Gill

Caring for the desert as it stands was a fairly unpopular mindset among my Arizona friends reflecting the typical ambivalence shown towards the ecosystem in which we lived.

As Gretel Ehrlich said “We Americans are great on fillers, as if what we have, what we are, is not enough,” and the desert appears to many as an open unfillable space to bridge. However, if we can follow Ehrlich’s thoughts of space as solace and combine them with Aldo Leopold’s “Sand County Almanac” proposal of obligation and responsibility to our community including both humanity and the land itself, we may be able to fix the way we inhabit the desert.