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Road Trip to Los Alamos- November 12 to November 19, 2007 by Jan Spencer

One of my best friends was offered a job working for the city of Los Alamos, New Mexico. He needed to drive from Eugene to his new place of employment so I went along for the ride. We had a week to make the trip so that meant we could do a bit of meandering, which we did.

We arrived to Los Alamos a week later and the experience has left me with a number of impressions of what we saw of both the natural landscape and the “human scape.” We passed through a variety of towns and small cities and I found two chance conversations in Santa Fe to be particularly interesting.

My comments are strictly impressions. The few facts and figures are accurate, the impressions based on what I saw and not on rigorous research. Further, I should add my own prejudices as an advocate of deep changes in our culture in a far more eco logical direction. I am a critic of global capitalism and the mass consumption culture.

My friend Paul and I have collaborated on travels before to exotic places like Baja and Key West. Our world views are similar and we both have a great appreciation for throwing the frisbee.

We left Eugene driving down the coast from Coos Bay to Arcata, then east through Redding, a meander through Reno and across Nevada on the “World's Lonliest Road”. Then to Green River, Utah, Moab, Durango and finally across the flats of northwest New Mexico to Los Alamos. For the most part, we avoided the Interstate Highways.

Overall impression- although the towns are diverse in size, history and geography, they seem to share a common condition. None would look to have a prayer of survival in any way remotely resembling their current affluent status in a resource constrained future.

Coos Bay's logging past is evident. A huge casino now occupies what was at one time acres of dock area for holding logs. The casino has provided a several acre parking/camping area with a few trees for recreational vehicles to tie up for multi day visits to the slots and craps inside. Maybe the indigenous casino owners will end up buying the town at a discount. A glimmer of hope, perhaps the proposed LNG terminal may deliver a few jobs to the area, at quite a cost.

Arcata, population about 17,000, has a progressive reputation. It also has a very nice grassy downtown square with a few thirty foot canary island date palms in the middle of it- a botanical landmark which identifies the northerly limits their range in North America. [A few canaries can be found all the way to Brookings and Gold Beach, mature but much shorter] The day we visited, there was a thriving farmer's market, a virtual downtown party.

Humboldt State, enrollement about 8,000, is a vital employer in Arcata. So is pot. An article in a local paper described the importance of legalized marijuanna in Arcata. There are five legal medical marijuanna dispensaries in town, all leased from local well established real estate owners with remodeling upgrades in the works for several. There are many local pot growers to supply both the legal and not legal markets. With over 5000 legal medical marijanna users registered in Arcata, not to mention many others clandestine, one can imagine a sizable amount of commerce in THC as the article explained.

The civic discussion is not should pot be legal, its about where to better locate the cannabis outlets and the places to grown it, more of a zoning issue.

Certainly Arcata's economy includes a variety of elements but pot and students have to be near the top of the list, neither productive in the sense of providing tangible goods of value for taking care of local needs.

We headed east from Arcata, passing through Redding in a chilly rain as darkness fell. Boiling mud was on the agenda at Lassen National Park, about 60 miles east. Turns out the road through the park was already closed due to snow so we spent a chilly night in the van at the north entrance with a lot of rain, the mud was out of reach. In the morning it was clearing and we found ourselves only a couple hundred feet below the snow line.

The Lassen area is the merging of the Sierra Nevada extending up from the south, the southern end of Cascades extending to the north and the westerly limit to Nevada's Basin and Range region.

We did a bit of gravel roading through the Sierra and meandered past farms and rural settelements invariably cluttered with the rusted skeletons of cars, trucks, tractors and micellanious household debris.

A few hours later, Reno greeted us with distant outposts of suburbia spread out on the barren mesas and rocky hills. No UGB here. What we saw was a lot of new houses, roads, strip malls and lack of appreciation for the approaching resource constrained future.

We came over a rise and there was central Reno. Miles across, dry as can be, sprawling with several isloated 15 storey towers with a more dense neon downtown, with its dozens of lit up casinos, liquor stores and pawn shops. Its a real racket and looks to be well patronzed. The strip is lit up in mid day with bright mesmerizing entrances luring people inside, making me think of carnivorous pitcher plants in a bog near Florence.

The shallow and modest Trukee River flows out of the Sierra and runs through town then decline in volume in a parched gully along the Interstate heading east and eventually giving up al together in closed drainage obscurity a bit further east.

Reno is in the high desert, there was no visible agriculture anywhere nearby. The tall isolated buildings we passed were hotels and their companion casinos. I don't know what else happens in Reno but my guess is without a lot of imported energy, food and materials, it would not fare well. I dont imagine the good people of Reno, on their own, could gamble away enough money and family treasure to keep the casinos going. A lot of people need to show up from out of town.

Next we headed out on US Highway 50, the “Lonliest Highway on Earth” as it describes itself. The remnant towns every 50 or 60 miles- Austin, Eureka, Ely, were all founded on resource extraction. Ely, does have a huge open pit copper mine, very much in use. The others are largely automobile pit stops along the lonely road. The entire area is arid. Without energy and the needs of everday life trucked in and jobs servicing the motorized tourists passing through, the World's Lonliest Road would be far lonlier. Central Nevada does not look like a place to build a future.

We did find a hot spring near Austin. It was a great stop, millions of stars at night and as we found in the morning, surrounded by snow dusted mountains. The hot spring water was perfect for an early morning soak with lots of steam in the 20 degree temps.

Moving east, Nevada's igneous fault block mountains give way to Utah's sedementary plateaus. We arrived in Green River after dark and stayed in a motel. About all we saw of the town was a half milestrip of franchise motels and a truck stop. Green River is in the desert, a small service town with little else besides the highway and the John Wesley Powel Museum. Perhaps the rumored nuclear power plant can provide some employment. No doubt, such a plant if built, would be located on the modest sized river for cooling. Imagine, a nuclear power plant above the grand canyon and the water supply for tens of millions.

One of our main goals for the drive down was to do a bit of hiking in the Canyon Lands area. We ended up staying a couple nights at Arches National Park and it was a great choice. The arches and thier other wondrous erosional formations along with perfect sunny cool weather combined for a great visit.

We went into Moab for supplies at the small natural food store and had a look around town. Sure enough, there was a good deal more girth to the town than the last time I was there- a lot more motels, all kind of bike rentals, outdoor adventure guides, restaurants, gear, gear and more gear.

I asked at the natural food store if they sold any local produce. Surprisingly, they did. It was arugalla.

Moab has a very nice bike path along the small creek that runs through town. Moab's human built environment, other than a nice walkable in town residential neighborhood, is auto dependent like everywhere else in the US. Its economy is dominated by seasonal tourism, which in turn is made possible by cheap oil. Add to that the near absence of food producing potential and Moab's resources for looking after itself, post cheap energy, is limited to say the least.

We left Moab's surprisingly persistent road side clutter behind, with intentions to stay in Durango for the night. Along the way, southeastern Utah is flat and surprisingly, an area with considerable food production. From what we could see, dried beans is the main crop, we saw several farners' co-ops with large metal storage silos along the road. What food is grown needs to be irrigated

Into Durango. Mainstreet is not the location of the through highway anymore. There is six lane bypass with stoplights a block to the west that was congested from sunset when we arrived to hours later after dark. The mainstreet, relatively pedestrian friendly, is five or six blocks of real estate offices, high end clothing, jewelry, restuarants, antiques, several expensive historic hotels and other products and services for the well off.

Directly east of downtown is old Durango, a very attractive neighborhood of tree shaded streets, bungalows and larger well maintained Victorian homes. I walked for a half hour and it is most pleasant, easy access to downtown's designer boutiques. Durango is also famous for its narrow guage excursion train, a reminder of its mining history.

I suspect there is some local agriculture but also suspect it isn't much. The area is high desert, about 7000 feet above sea level which means a growing season of less than 125 days between frost. Durango's economy appears based on tourists and well off retirees from Texas, again, not a secure foundation for changing times.

Finally, the home stretch. We drove south from Durango. Entering New Mexico, the land scape becomes flatter but still high desert and an area with some oil and gas extraction. There are mountains in the distance with a few cluttered dusty towns up close along the road. Also evident closer to the towns are companies offereing suppport services related to resource extraction. There was also some irrigated agriculture that was looking to be hay for cattle.

At last, we drove over the Jemez Mountains with their aspens and pines. The area has a rich volcanic history. We passed by the Jemez Caldera, the mostly filled in remains of a massive explosion that took place over a million years ago that blasted out something like 500 times more rock and debris than Mt. St. Helens. The Caldera, twice as wide as Crater Lake is now grass covered with emerging controversy whether to exploit the area's certain geo thermal potential.

We descended the east side of the mountains into Los Alamos and the Lab with its security check, tech areas and various odd shaped and notably ominous water towers. After all, the plutonium triggers for US nuclear bombs are manufactured here along with a lot of classified nuclear military research, much of it to insure the usability of elderly nuclear weapons.

I stayed only a couple nights. Paul and I did walk a good deal in the suburban neighborhood below the Los Alamos mesa. I was keen to see solar architecture, given the sunny climate. Certainly a few houses did include visible passive solar design, maybe one in ten with more windows on the south or sun rooms, but the solar should have been the rule, not the exception. Given what passive solar design can do in Eugene, I have a wonderful 350 ft sq sun room, one would think sunnier parts of the country would make far better use of simple passive solar design.

Los Alamos is a company town. The Lab covers 40 square miles- much of it wooded- and work for over 14,000 regular employees, consultants, guests, security workers and various other contractors. The town's population is about the same but many Lab workers do not live in town. Certainly, the Lab is the dominating economic entity of the town.

My friend, Paul's job is to help turn the downtown area into a more pedestrian friendly and mixed use area, a contrast to the current large and low office and bank buildings set among acres of parking.

The next day, Paul and I drove to Santa Fe so I could catch the airport shuttle to Albuquerqe. I was eager to return home. We had a very nice stroll around the downtown plaza. Santa Fe downtown is very attractive with the code required adobe design standards. Still, the shops are dominated by high end retail sales- clothes, jewelry, real estate - the usual for a destination of affluent tourists and retirees.

I did have two very interesting conversations in Santa Fe.

One at a popular restaurant where we shared a table with an older couple. The breakfast was north New Mexico, spicey beans, chipote, eggs and tortilla. The conversation was fascinating. Turns out our table mates were from Hereford, Texas, a place I had a bit of contact with 25 years ago by way of natural food distributor Arrowhead Mills, which is located there. Mr. Tablemate, a gracious and handsome man about 70, has been the mayor of Hereford for 16 years.

Hereford, a hundred years ago known as Windmill city, is in the High Planes of Texas near the New Mexico line, about 50 miles southwest of Amarillo. The High Planes- 3000 to 4000 feet above sea and remarkably flatl, has a serious agricultural economy thanks to deep well irrigation. Primary crops are wheat, sorghum and cotton along with vast feed lots. Several counties in the area are among the top ten in Texas in terms of value of agricultural production. Agriculture there is also known for its near complete dependency on the falling water table of the vast Oglalla Aquifer. In fact, thousands of acres of farm land in the area had fallen out of irrigated use because the lowering water table, from overuse, made irrigation too expensive.

I asked about the water issue. What I found out was that the new emerging energy economy was creating a buzz in Hereford. Government subsidies for ethanol were raising the price of corn enough so that much of the dry farming was returning to irrigation. There were two new ethanol plants in town.
Schools were seeing a modest increase in students. He said Hereford was drying up before the bio fuel frenzy and he did not say Hereford was a boom town now but there was a visible revitalization.

My table mates had a second home in Santa Fe and they also owned a feed lot in Hereford. The changing energy economy was good for his town but corn for cattle feed had gone up in cost several times, affecting him and other feed lot operators. I asked if people would need to choose between driving and burgers. He did not laugh.

I shifted the conversation and explained there were other points of view regarding the new energy economy. I said where I came from, there was a good deal of discussion about climate change and resource depletion and that in Eugene, many people were choosing to downsize their ecological footprint.

His wife asked me how we might better take care of our needs. I explained the difference between supply sided approaches- just producing more- and how we are finding ourselves far out on a limb. I said thereare other choices that are more eco logical and make far more sense. She asked if conservation was part of such an approach as if it was something a bit odd or speculative in its potential effectiveness.

I suggested the choices we had were not only technical but also social and that even took in our values. I mentioned that all the great uplifting philosophies and religions of the world through history placed a high value on material modesty and respect for the natural world and the changes that were called for given today's realities were to me, more personal, ethical and cultural rather than technical. Using less made the most sense.

They both seemed at a loss for words. The conversation ended, we shook hands, I wished them well and they left. It was a respectful dialogue and a wonderful opportunity to hear views that neither of us had much contact with.

Paul took me to the shuttle stop, we said our good byes and I was on my way to Albuquerque. Seven people with various destinations rode in the stretch van, myself and another fellow sat in the rear. After watching several miles of sprawling suburban Santa Fe go past, the forty something looking fellow turned and asked where I was going. I said Eugene and that was the start of the second conversation.

Robert and his wife had recently moved to Santa Fe from upstate New York. He was still working for a company that supplies chemicals and technical support to paper mills, in effect, commuting every several weeks to New York. At the same time, he and his wife were in the act of a major life style shift.

They were converts to the thinking of the well know book, “Your Money or Your Life,“ one of the bibles of voluntary simplicity. The idea being to take a serious look at how one directed their life's energy and make choices that affirmed ones's own priorities. In practice, downsizing the material and upsizing self development, community involvement and eco logical responsibility. Robert and his wife had planned, saved and downsized to make the move to Santa Fe where they wanted to live more modestly according to their new convictions.

Previous to the move to Santa Fe, he had had an association with a rural cooperative inspired by Rudolf Steiner, in upstate New York that, thanks to his new voluntary simplicity ideals, he was only now beginning to more fully appreciate. The co-op was part a Waldorf School, CSA, part residential for both students and included full time community residents with other non resident associates, with multiple small scale interactive eco friendly businesses on site.

So Robert was having second thoughts about Santa Fe, realizing much of what he now had an ererging interest in, he already had access to but it was in New York. Meanwhile, his wife was enjoying life in Santa Fe and was not likely interested in moving back to the cold of upstate New York. They would have to see how it all evolved.

Robert and I parted ways once we reached the airport.

Travel stories. The two conversations in Santa Fe illustrate two very different perspectives and approaches to the world we live in. My acquaintences from Hereford resided well within the mainstream while Robert and his wife had conciously set themselves in a more eco logical direction that meant basic change in their own life styles.

Further thoughts from the trip. Some common themes.

Energy. Ethanol, nuclear, geothermal, gas for cars well over $3 per gallon all over. Climate change, resource depletion, so called renewable energy, subsidize to keep the status quo. Energy is a huge issues.

Water- the trip was mostly in the dry west. From the air in daytime, Phoenix is a vast city of growing millions with suburbs stretching out for tens of miles, into the desert. Reno, Moab, Durango, Santa Fe from the ground. Salt Lake from the air at night. All of these places are fast growing and dependent on water from substantial distance at tremendous cost in terms of energy, infrastructure and security. Meanwhile, we are learning the past one hundred or so years in the west have been particularly kind to human activity. The Oglalla Aquifer is in decline to the extent that in some states, farmers are being paid not to pump water from it. The new ethanol plants are water intensive and will compete with other water needs. Already, many towns are having a second look at bio fuel.

Limited agriculture. The entire trip crops for human food were scarce and what grazing we saw was very low quality. Of course, from Redding and 400 miles to the south is one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world. Production there is still enormously dependent on cheap energy, and energy intensive machinery, fertilizer and the rest along with increasingly stressed water supplies and the markets is serves are often thousands of miles away. Not a smart or durable arrangement.

Suburbia rules practically everywhere. Sprawling, auto dependent development flat out does not make sense. To see suburbia still expanding is a testament to how blind market capitalism is to common sense.

Given the state of the worlds economy, energy, water, environment, climate, international relations; one has a hard time understanding the profound, near absence of sensible change in how we feed, shelter and transport ourselves, unless. Unless one understands that market capitalism is not interested is what is healthy for people or planet. Its primary interest is production and consumption of products and services and externalizing the cost.

That understanding explains why, virtually every town we saw on our road trip is actively degrading their own futures with continued development that assumes energy and resources will remain cheap and plentiful.Such development is not a good idea regardless of resources.

How does Eugene compare? Slightly better in terms of agriculture and land use. But one cannot be intellectually honest and say one place is good because its not as bad as other places. Its just not as bad. Eugene could do far better, there is plenty of incentive.