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Desert Living.

Posted: Sun May 09, 2010 8:27 pm
by Phantombs
Hey I am new to this website/forum and for awhile I have been looking for a resource on the deserts of America and so glad I have found it.

I'm just wondering about all the people who have left the cities behind why you decided on the Desert?
I have been following the David Lynch interviews and came across a few people who have decided to pack it all in and move to the desert. And think it is amazing people do that.

Also what does it take to live in the desert? I'm interested in everything so feel free to respond with anything desert living related.

thanks.

Re: Desert Living.

Posted: Sun May 09, 2010 10:25 pm
by oroblanco
Welcome to DesertUSA Phantombs! :D

I am sure that others here will have answers to your questions, though I would reply to a part, you asked,
Also what does it take to live in the desert?
For one, a different mind-set from just about everywhere else. It is a different place, and people seem to either love the desert deepy or they hate it with a passion, not much in between. If you have never visited our American southwest, it is worth the trip and you will then have at least a part of your answers.
Roy ~ Oroblanco

Re: Desert Living.

Posted: Mon May 10, 2010 5:40 am
by yuccahead
"Here, one may say, I should like to stay for a month, or a year, or a decade. It could give something to me and I, perhaps, something to it - if only some sort of love and understanding. More rarely - perhaps only once, perhaps two or three times - one experiences something more like love at first sight. The desire to stay, to enter in, is not a whim or a notion but a passion. If I do not somehow posess this, if I never learn what it was that called out, what it was that was being offered, I shall feel all my life that I have missed something intended for me. If I do not, for a time at least, live here I shall not have lived as fully as I had the capacity to live." -Joseph Wood Krutch
I don't know who David Lynch is or any of the people that you're referring to that moved to the desert, but when you begin to feel like the esteemed Mr. Krutch you'll have what it takes to live in the desert.
(disclaimer-IMHO)
BTW, welcome to DUSA.

Re: Desert Living.

Posted: Mon May 10, 2010 6:02 am
by reptilist
Welcome to DUSA!

My family and I left the big city twenty years ago when I came to work at the Morenci copper mine in a remote area of Eastern Arizona.
There is a saying hereabouts: The men love it and the women hate it!

Learn to do things that you wouldn't have done in the city...Go rock hunting instead of shopping. Go to the rodeo. Find new ways to be entertained.

Re: Desert Living.

Posted: Mon May 10, 2010 5:07 pm
by Mike C.
Welcome to DUSA. Many good people here. Back in the 70's the girl who is still my wife introduced me to the desert. As far as I was concerned the desert sucked; everything is out to get you one way or another (wildlife,plants, etc.). I soon "tuned in" to reality as I found myself loving the desert for all it has to offer. I read all I could find about the deserts while constantly returning to camp and more importantly explore its splendor and history. Now I am hooked! That's the kind of folks that leave the city for the desert. I might add that meeting real desert rats out there is a bonus. :D Mike C. Brea, Ca. (I do not live in the desert---yet).

Re: Desert Living.

Posted: Mon May 10, 2010 9:31 pm
by Sandman
Sunrise.......sunset, the magic light. The serenity and solitude, subtle and soft yet harsh. A land of contrasts.

You have to experience it to understand

Re: Desert Living.

Posted: Tue May 11, 2010 5:41 am
by Sal

there are many areas of the desert that are unpopulated. Where I live I cannot see another house for miles--my closest neighbor lives on the horizon about 6 miles away.

I had to dig my water lines, install my elec system, figure out how to keep snakes out of the backyard. I planted 7 trees because more than that would use too much water.

The silence, the constantly changing weather, the migratory birds, The cold in the winter, the HEAT in the summer. Dirt roads, lizards, ant hills, cactus flowers, jackrabbits, coyotes, foxes..tortoises! Abandoned homesites, old trash piles, desert playas, desert candle, brittlebush, Joshua trees, hawks--I once saw a hawk ascending 300 feet on a thermal--with a snake dangling in its beak!

As a visitor from the forest noted--in the desert you can see from horizon to horizon. You notice the changing positions of where the sun and moon rise and set.

The smell of creosote after a rain. Sitting inside near a warm fire watching through the window as freezing winds whip the desert foliage like waves on the ocean.

Re: Desert Living.

Posted: Tue May 11, 2010 6:26 pm
by DesertWRX
We don't live away from people, but at least our neighborhood has 2 - 2.5 arces. Still it is so much better than the crowds and crime that the coast has. The big desert cities do have plenty of crime and crowds though. The big desert cities are inhabited by a lot of people that want them to look like where they came from on the coast... lots of trees, water, and grass. When you drive through them you'd never know you are in the desert till you leave the city limits. People want to change the desert into something that it isn't. We have a few people out in Borrego like that.
I Love it when it gets warm. It is fantastic to sit up on the deck at sunset and watch the darkness engulf us. The bats flying above us and over the pool is pretty neat. Nothing like a good warm breeze in the dark up there. There are things that go bump in the dark, but they don't bite. Borrego Springs is a Dark Skies community so that helps the night viewing.
The heat is dangerous. You drink a lot of water and make sure you are not out in it too long during summer. At night you do have to make sure you don't get bit by one of the rattlesnakes. And yes, you always have to watch out for the cholla cactus.
Your electricity bill goes out of sight in the summer. That's a negativer for living in the desert!

Re: Desert Living.

Posted: Tue May 11, 2010 7:09 pm
by coazon de oro
All desert dwellers, you have the option of going "coolerado" to save on electricity. I wish I had that option, the wild horse desert here in Texas is very humid. Look it up. Homar

Re: Desert Living.

Posted: Thu May 13, 2010 6:52 pm
by oroblanco
Hola amigo - those swamp coolers only work when you have dry hot weather, during the AZ "monsoon" season, <early July to mid September> the humidity is so high that they have little effect. They don't put this in the brochures, of course! :o :lol:
Oroblanco