My name's Patrick, and I hail from beautiful Yucca Valley, California. I was raised on the mean streets of suburban New Jersey... much of my life is a meaningless blur prior to age 20 when I packed up all my possessions into my 1991 Chrysler LeBaron (convertible of course) and pointed toward the West. After living out of my car for a long bit in beautiful places like Moab, Utah and West Yellowstone, Montana, I landed out here in the Mojave Desert.
I am a desert rat at heart. I love the warm 60 degree winter days, and I truly love the consistent 100 degree summer days (though I gotta say-- no one loves it here once it tops 110). Our fractured mezogranite provides and endless playground for scrambling and rock climbing, and our native vegetation is amongst the most highly adapted and resilient in the world.
I am a Program Manager with the Student Conservation Association (SCA) Desert Restoration Corps. We employ interns (about 60 of 'em this year) doing revegetation, rehabilitation, and restoration on Off Highway Vehicle damanged public lands throughout Southern California. The SCA is a nationwide non-profit that connects young people to land management agencies, engaging them in volunteer service on public lands.
For fun, I hike, backpack, and climb. I'm attempting (see my recent blog post) to stop driving so far to recreate, but of late in my life my favorite areas to recreate have been the Grand Canyon and the High Sierra. I am also a plant geek of sorts--nothing gives me more satisfaction than wandering around the desert with a plant guide in hand, finding new (to me) and rare species and identifying them (see: California Native Plant Society). I also grow a number of desert plants from around the world, mostly cacti and succulents, in my apartment. Oh yeah, and I listen to a whole lot of NPR. (KCRW is my local affiliate, and the best damn NPR station in the country!)
And finally, I am an activist. I am largely interested in land-use issues (specifically public land use issues) in the West. Wilderness designation happens to be my pet issue (see: California Wilderness Coalition, Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Friends of Nevada Wilderness, The Wilderness Society). I think alternative journalism in the West is extremely important (see: High Country News, The Canyon County Zephyr). And finally, I think good, old fashioned, environmental advocacy, litigation, and activism is the saving grace of our fair nation (see: Center for Biological Diversity, Wildlands Conservancy, Buffalo Field Campaign).
I'm blogging here on Green Options about the greening of my life. For a description of that (my mission statement, if you will) see my first post. I'd love to hear from you with any comments or ideas! My email is YuccaDesertRat (at) Yahoo (dot) com.
Publisher's Note: Look at the date this was written before getting too mad at Patrick. 
After giving it considerable thought over the past few months, I decided to stop walking to work.I don’t live terribly far from my job (just a few blocks, in fact), and so when I first accepted the job, I make the decision to walk to work each day. But I’ve been finding myself late to work many days, because [...]
Just as important as voicing your views to the decision-makers on local issues (see parts One and Two of this series) is mobilizing support amongst local people in your community for Green Issues.An easy and very important way to do this is through your local newspaper. Local news is where ideas are hashed out… Local media tends to be much less dominated by corporate interests than national or even regional media, and [...]
One of the toughest times of day to really kick the processed, chemical laden food habit is snack time. Getting a craving for a snack midway through the afternoon can inevitably lead to buying some utterly disgusted product from Frito-Lay or Mars. Even those “natural” chips or organic cookies you got down at the co-op tend to have a bunch of unpronounceable ingredients listed on the package.One way to avoid this is coming [...]
We’ve all been struck by the dilemma at some point in the past several years. A beautiful piece of technology, which we were so excited about initially, slowly faded, began to malfunction, and finally bit the dust. Most of our modern electronics are completely non-repairable (or repair is prohibitively expensive—in many cases more than the cost of the item!), and so we dispose of them. But how?E-waste is becoming a major problem [...]
OK, so this one’s kind of a no-brainer, but it’s not something that people necessarily intuit on their own. For years, I proclaimed myself a dedicated environmentalist, and yet… every time allergy season rolled around, I would go out and purchase box upon box of “Ultra” tissues, or “lotioned” tissues, or “Super” tissues. All made from trees and going straight into the trash.
Over the months I've been slowly eliminating all sorts of unnatural and synthetic chemicals from my diet and my life. Processed foods and and unsustainable clothing have been thrown by the wayside. So why am I still smearing pesticides all over my body?Mother Earth News has a fantastic article on Why You Don't Need Antibacterial Soap. While a simple google search will turn up dozens of articles and debates about [...]
In the first piece in this series, I wrote about finding out who makes decisions about issues that affect you on the local level. The next step is to attend meetings and public hearings. Almost every meeting when a decision is about to be made, be it Town Council, County Commission, or others, will have what’s known as a “Public Comment” period. This is a chance for members of the public to stand up [...]
While I tend to shave infrequently, when I do it has always been with the viciously harsh chemicals found in commercial shaving creams. Such lovely items as: stearic acid, triethanolamine, isobutene, diazolindinyl urea, and sodium lauryl sulfate, amongst others. Yes, the time honored tradition of shaving passed down from father-to-son (in my case) carries with it a legacy of toxicity.In the process of greening my life, I have been especially reluctant to let [...]
There are millions of issues that the conscientious citizen can sink his or her teeth into… It can become almost overwhelming to keep track of all the concerns you are passionate about, or problems that you find particularly vexing in this world. The key is to sort through the morass and find some concrete areas that you can get into and make a difference with. Gary Snyder once said that we must, “Find [...]
Each day, millions of Americans sit down to a meal, and coat it with a variety of condiments that have their origins in the Southwest of North America. Salsa and hot sauce are two of the favorites, and are a mainstay at dinner tables and restaurants across the country and the world. However the traditional salsa or hot sauce is a mass-produced mess, loaded with preservatives, “natural” and artificial flavors, and other chemicals [...]
