Judging mind is what afflicts most of my waking day. As environmental activists go there appear to be various kinds and types. Good weather is a terrible thing when you need awful weather to help fill reservoirs, swell rivers and provoke useful flash floods.
To quell certainty and consult with higher authorities I swing south to the Mexican frontier and pull into Patagonia, Arizona where I will speak with the town’s grizzled survivors of past and present confrontations.
All five hundred citizens live in mesquite and cottonwood splendor up in the higher country. Sonoita Creek runs when it runs at all along Patagonia’s northern boundary. An Australian mining operation in the Patagonia Mountains is good news for jobs and not good news for contaminated waters that runoff into Harshaw Creek. The bone dry headwaters of the Santa Cruz River are to the west, further yonder is Nogales.
Santa Cruz County has been losing citizens for most of a century. Ranchers ran too many head of cattle until the rangeland collapsed. A century later recovery is slow and fat times and big herds are long gone.
Daylight comes pull on your pants best start with coffee at Gathering Grounds. If you want to know what is and isn’t going to happen in Patagonia word will spread from here reverberate off Santa Rita Rd to Roadrunner Lane then crash land by dusk at the Wagon Wheel Saloon.
Gossip and speculation arrive as the simple truth later that day all dressed up with exaggeration and outright falsehoods. All this speculative ruminating heals small town solitude. For some the hands of time crawls, for others clocks stand still, here in Patagonia all this slow aching wait will make a stash of whiskey go missing.
There is no rush hour, no crowds, no lines, no waiting. If you suffer from an automotive breakdown the only reason it is not fixed this instant is to do with the mechanical philosophy employed by the talented souls that have dedicated their waking hours to fixing the problems you alone have caused. All these worn out used machines didn’t just get like this, something has caused all this wear and tear, all this put off maintenance and mindful neglect. You will need more time to be more ashamed of yourself.
You’ll be directed to get a room at the Stage Stop Inn. Supper is served early, don’t wait too long, because by then the cooks finished and steadying their culinary trials at the Wagon Wheel before walking back to their tin roofed adobe with its brightly painted green front door.
Younger souls arrive by mistake and a handful try to make a go of it and stay. At one time most had come by Volkswagen bus. All the full timers see the many who seek a life here and the few who find one to be part of Darwin’s great insight into survival. Patagonia is not the Galápagos Islands but by closing time at the Wagon Wheel people in the parking lot out front enjoy a few last cuss words while throwing stones to scatter pesky javalena.
The lithium mine up on Thacker Pass in Humboldt County, Nevada is about to break ground. I am in here in Patagonia to put the open pit mining troubles in the Great Basin up for discussion down here in the Sonoran.
Water contamination is always a concern when an open pit mine is involved. Once a mining company can see the first glimmer of the end they’ll belly up go bankrupt, defund the miners pension plan, look to stash their profits into untouchable accounts and leave as much of the mess for governments to cleanup, there is no profit in buckling under to authority.
Socialists, communists and libertarians are epithets, Chevy, Ford and Dodge pickup trucks reflect upon the vulgar purchasing decisions of the drivers. There is no such thing as elective surgery in Patagonia or Thacker Pass, there are no surgeons, no hospitals and no health care system at all. You drive to Nogales or Winnemucca if what you want to do is go on a date with a doctor.
Still, here we are up on Thacker Pass, about to jump off the cliff and commit to a Canadian mining company’s proposal to bring lithium out of the ground, refine the ore and then ship this battery making compound to markets here in the United States.
A band of blockaders have set up camp on Thacker. Here told they say that no good can come from this project, that humankind needs to forget about the automobile and imagine a less mobile life that is more in line with how we’ve been doing it since we first arrived on this planet. Nike stocks are up and Goodyear Tires stocks are down in this groups solutions to our planetary problems.
Like Patagonia up on Thacker once the mine swings into production water will be pumped, refining process requires water, then the waste water will need remediation and a safe journey back into the ground. Lithium mining operators up here must get this right, have the know how to do just that, and all we need to do is hold them to it.
Looking out five decades to the mining operation exhausting the lithium up on this mountain, nobody knows for sure how many batteries will be built with this ore, but plenty guess, my best guess is near about one billion automobiles plus or minus one billion to be about right.
I keep trying to wrap my judging mind around our effort to pull our world out of the carbon trap we’ve set. Outside the Wagon Wheel Saloon in Patagonia I propose that the best whiskey drinking solutions often tend to end by being read fairytales by frolicsome partners.
I’m seeking a proper solution here. For both operations, one near Patagonia the other up on Thacker Pass water treatment and filtration, we make damn sure we are running a wholistic system that doesn’t endanger our future since we are doing this because our future is already endangered. Screwing this up even more is as stupid as stupid gets, hope you wildcatters in the Permian are listening.
Second, we put more teeth in bonds mining company’s are legally required to post. Right now they can do some no good dirty double crossing and just as you near the time you start winding down the mining company and its assorted subsidiaries scatter like jackrabbits with the loot and vanishes without a trace. We’ll need to sharpen our contracts, make sure a promise made is a promise kept, put into a contract, put a royalty on the product, stuff that into an untouchable account and when time comes pensions, cleanup funds and other assorted closing costs are fully cared for.
Friends I’m afraid that’s about all the spleen, chewing tobacco and my favorite pet ring-tailed coatimundi stories I have time for. Slow walking across the field to Train Track Trail my rig is parked my bunk waiting where I’m going to rest my judging mind and allow for some night hour dreams to shelter me from life’s storms.
