A personal essay about visiting and living in the California desert, the architecture and art created there, and what does and doesn’t “belong” there. There are considerations of homesteader cabins, motels, “villains’ houses” and the author’s own ambivalent urges to own a piece of the desert, with references to Ed Ruscha, Rayner Banham and Noah Purifoy.

On a tour of the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California’s Mojave Desert, the author discusses the risks and potential benefits of large solar farms like this one. The article is accompanied by stunning black and white photographs of the Ivanpah facility by Jamey Stillings.

Genomicists study genetic information to understand how animals and plants survive and breed in their habitats, and how evolution happens to enhance survival. Shaffer describes how his study of genomics has colored the way he sees the world, the possibilities it opens up, and two examples of how the field has shaped understanding of species in California: the desert tortoise and the California tiger salamander.

The Mojave Desert in California is undergoing a boom in renewable energy, mostly in the form of utility-scale solar power plants. These projects have met with resistance from diverse groups concerned about impacts on desert landscapes, ecosystems, water resources, archaeological sites, military training exercises, and other natural and cultural resources and land uses. This paper explores the current debate over renewable energy in the Mojave in the context of the region’s broader environmental history. What do Californians want from the Mojave Desert? We conclude that residents of the state want many things from the Mojave, but it remains unclear whether a desert under increasing pressure will be able to supply all of those competing demands.

In this lyric essay the author journeys to the Mojave desert village of Joshua Tree, California, site of an ambitious and idiosyncratic work of assemblage by artist Noah Purifoy, whose career was forged in the crucible of civil rights and the Watts Riots of 1965. Although the work is highly abstract, references to segregation appear in various guises—although simple binaries are constantly disrupted by the sheer complexity of imagery conjured by the profusion of "assembled" objects. The setting for the work—the desert—is itself an integral component of the Purifoy's vision, offering mythic depth and the starkest of landscapes upon which to peer deep into the American psyche.