I first visited Joshua Tree Country on a Spring Break college road trip in 1990. Two buddies and I camped out for a few days in a tent, cooked our meals on a Coleman stove, and spent our days climbing the famous rock formations and our nights staring with wonder at the multitude of stars, making a game of picking out the satellites. No plant life caught my eye on this visit other than the iconic Joshua Tree itself which at the time we all associated with the recent U2 album of the same name. Though our journey had started in Northfield, Minnesota, and had exposed us to countless sights of beauty and wonder, the desert made the biggest impression on me.

Nearly a decade later, in 1999, I had not forgotten Joshua Tree Country and I returned on another road trip, this time with a girlfriend and from further away yet: Boston, Massachusetts. We camped for a couple days near the Cottonwood Springs entrance of what was then still Joshua Tree National Monument, again in a tent with a Coleman. As in 1990, the Joshua Trees were the only flora that got my attention.

Skip ahead to 2015 for visit number three, which turned into a stay of nearly four months. This time I was accompanied by my farming partner of the last few years and we stayed in a rambling house on the edge of the village of Joshua Tree. The large windows featured a grand view of the hills on the north side of what was now Joshua Tree National Park and of the Creosote Bush scrub rolling away to the east where it met a blurry seam of mountains on the horizon. Over the past ten years, I had been supporting myself as a farmer, herbalist, and seedsman, so on this visit all the plants seized my attention, not just the Joshua Tree.

As when one falls in love and is intrigued by every detail of a new lover’s body and being, I was entranced by the flora and fauna of Joshua Tree Country. 
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In the Summer of 2012, I met a Shoshone-trained elder named Finisia Medrano. (The story of that meeting is told in “Postcard from Eastern Oregon: When Planting Food is Illegal”). She has spent decades following the routes and practices of the ancient migratory “Hoop” of the Great Basin Native Americans, harvesting and cultivating wild food seasonally. In so doing, she has safeguarded vanishing knowledge and made invaluable observations of the ecosystems in an area spanning several states. Over that time she has witnessed the undeniable effects of Climate Change.

“Refugees without legs:” this is the phrase Finisia uses to describe the status of many species of native plants which were traditional staple foods for indigenous Americans that are now threatened in their current ecosystems by the effects of Climate Change. Temperature extremes, atypical rainfall patterns, and disturbances in seasonal patterns are all taking a tangible toll, disrupting cycles of sprout, flower, seed and root growth which had been stable for millenia. And at a rate that is fast and getting faster. Finisia insists that if these plants are going to survive – as viable species and as food sources – that they will need to be relocated to different areas, further north and/or to higher elevations, and that people will need to do the relocating. We, humans, have made them refugees, and we, humans, must be their legs so they can flee. The speed of Climate Change has already outpaced the ability of plants to migrate on their own as they might have in response to previous, more gradual shifts.

“Refugees without Legs”: This phrase, and its implicit call to action, has been rattling around in my head since I first heard Finisia use it. Indeed, humans have induced Climate Change, and I agree that with that culpability comes responsibility. Creatures are suffering who had no role in the destruction we are wreaking. If we are going to attempt to mitigate the change that has already occurred and try to prevent further change – as daunting as these tasks are – then what we must change first is our own minds; we need to adopt new ideas and practices, and discard those that have become irrelevant and counter-productive. One such idea and practice that we must now reject is that of so-called “Invasive Species.”

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