Tooth and nail

Let's save a pile of quartz

Today’s accompanying tune: “The American Dream is Killing Me” by Green Day

The hill dazzled in the bright sunlight. The light bent and refracted after hitting the thousands of tiny rocks that comprised the low rise, not tall enough to qualify as a mountain but tall enough to provide an unobstructed view of the rolling desert below. The rock to the south — a giant one that had rolled off from the top of the mountain decades earlier, then split cleanly — just barely visible from this small hill’s summit, the rounded face ducking in and out of view amongst the tendrils of ridges reaching down from the primary mountain towards the desert floor. From afar, the hill appeared lighter than the desert soil surrounding it, glistening in a paler hue than the dun-colored rocks around it. Upon further inspection, I realized that the hill was simply a pile of pure quartz.

As the ravens circled overhead and the swifts watched from their rocky perches, I picked my way up to the top of the hill, the pieces of stone increasing in size until I’d reached the bedrock — bedstone? — jutting towards the sky at the summit. I wasn’t surprised to learn various groups had used this hill for meditations and rituals — how can you not count as sacred something that exists despite all the forces working against its existence, something that has no business existing in the first place but somehow does? Something unexpected. Something breathtaking. Something beautiful. Something that exposes the secrets held dear by our planet, the beauty oftentimes hiding below the surface unnoticed by the humans moving over it. A whisper, a suggestion, that it is all beautiful, all sacred, if only you stop and look.

Glimpses of earth’s magic are anything but few and far between. I felt it as the glacial water sprayed my face in a cavernous waterfall carved through pure marble in Alaska. I felt it in the striking granite towers topped with black stone so distinctly demarcated they could have been paintings. I felt it as the ground faded from deep blacks to stunning pinks in the backcountry in Joshua Tree as I crossed on of earth’s long-held borders. I felt it scrambling atop the tie-dyed sandstone outside of Las Vegas. I’ve felt it enough that, when a friend posted a video on Instagram recently that showed a secret pile of turquoise she discovered while out hiking, I didn’t even need to be present to know the earth was again showing us her magical hand.

The mountain of quartz in the desert is among the hundreds of millions of acres of federal land earmarked for sale under a currently proposed bill in Congress. The hill sits on land overseen by the Bureau of Land Management, and the surrounding desert is overrun with off-road vehicles, broken glass, spent bullet casings, dilapidated RVs, graffiti, and other remnants of human activity. Historically, BLM land is among the least protected of federal lands, with few limitations on use and enforcement. Crucially, as it relates to this bill making its way through Congress, BLM land is still off-limits to many developers, mining groups, and energy companies looking to turn a profit from the natural resources confined within its borders. The pile of quartz cannot currently be harvested, refined, ground into dust, and molded into countertops. If the bill passes as it is currently written, that outcome is not only possible — it is likely.

If you cover enough mileage around the Mojave Desert in a vehicle, you can glimpse the future lawmakers in Washington are pursuing. Gaping wounds in the mountains to the North, to the East, to the West all reveal themselves if you know from which angle to look, the developers aware enough to know the visual and environmental damage they were inflicting on the ecosystems and communities to know to hide the evidence as best they could. A massive stretch of interstate — Historic Route 66 — is permanently closed to motorists at the discretion of a private company who prefers no one glimpse the damage they’ve wrought at all. Wind whips dust from the dried beds surrounding the chloride plant just outside the boundaries of two designated wilderness areas, coating passersby in toxic materials used in the refining process. Lithium plants have sprung up on the shores of a receding, man-made lake with a salinity so high nothing can live in it. If given the chance, corporations will stop at nothing to bleed the earth dry.

It’s not just about the threats to access in recreation areas, though I understand why that’s often most folks’ first thought given its most people’s first interaction with federal lands. We camp and hike and fish and hunt and backpack and climb and run in these places. We get married and bring our children to picnic in spots that have held special places in our hearts. We grieve and celebrate and worship. For many people, these places are a part of them, a part of their journey, a part of their lives. Those arguments, however, implicitly place a value on these lands strictly through our relationship to them. To say what they provide us, what they can do for us, what function they have, and what role they play in our lives. Left out is the fact that these lands are special and important in and of themselves. They are migration corridors and breeding grounds and the last remaining habitats for a variety of species. They are often places a human will never set foot, nor should they. They are spectacular canyons of pure marble and piles of precious stones left only for the birds to see. The lands do not owe us humans much — it is us who owe them deeply, a debt no one person can ever hope to repay in their given lifetime but one we are obligated to honor at every turn. It is the very least we can do.

The alternative — one with the land stripped and mined for parts, toxic dust wafting miles away, main thoroughfares closed to outside scrutiny — is a product of our society’s tendency towards optimization and productivity. Our tendency towards measurements and efficiency and ease. The same society that implores people to diagnose their medical issues with AI hallucinations or have a language model write texts to their children. It is one that does not value patience. It does not value the act of noticing or the idea that some resources are not ours to dole out. We are trading a life of magic, a life in nature, for one of streamlined conformity and predictability. To make the goods we don’t need cheaper, goods we buy with stagnant salaries that clutter our limited spaces, goods that will eventually end up covering the earth in landfills. Our propensity to look for easy solutions to big, scary problems has gotten us to a point where privatization is deemed inevitable, where companies can squeeze ever-smaller margins out of the people they also employ. It is easier to proclaim the massive sell-off of public lands as too big a problem for one person to consider than to think of our culpability in bringing this reality to fruition, to think about our consumption habits and how they harm the planet we inhabit. It is easier to not notice what we’ve already taken, and what we still stand to lose.

Our relationship to the land on which we live is the very basis of our species, but it is a relationship few choose to acknowledge, let alone participate in. To be in a relationship with the natural world is to be unapologetically human, to recognize humanity in ourselves and those around us. To know nature is to know resilience, joy, celebration, and hope. To know nature is to understand migration and to see the uselessness of artificial borders. To know nature is to know the ubiquity of queerness and the fluidity of gender expression. To know nature is to understand the language of science and our quest to know more about the world around us. To fight for nature is to fight, tooth and nail, for our humanity. It is the only resource we have at our disposal, the one we can tap into in hopes of repaying our debt to the earth. An unending resource, if we so choose.

There is still time to influence lawmakers in Washington to ensure we do not lose these lands. To ensure the forests and deserts and meadows and valleys to remain intact. To ensure that nature’s secrets remain firmly ensconced in the earth, only visible to us as delightful surprises here and there. To ensure the hill of quartz, the canyon of marble, the pile of turquoise continue to inspire, to heal, to ground, to grow. To ensure that we still inhabit a world that values patience, softness, and magic because, without them, our humanity, too, becomes an endangered species.

You can send a message encouraging your Senators to do all they can to prevent passage of the proposed bill here. It is recommended you personalize the pre-written message somewhat to avoid legislators’ spam filters. You can also give your message over the phone — here is a directory of Senators’ phone numbers (outside dial-in is listed on the top right of the PDF) and a helpful script if that is something that appeals to you.

Here’s to fighting to keep the magic alive.

- Megan