Stephanie’s southwestern desert mountain town survival guide

So, you want to (or you’re being forced to) leave your large East Coast metropolis for a small Southwestern desert mountain town? Allow me to utilize the 7 months (!) of information I’ve gathered to provide some pointers to assist you in your transition. Just follow these simple tips and you will find yourself flourishing in a desert in no time.

Tip #1 Obtain a car and driver’s license.

The best car you can obtain if you want to fit in is a white Subaru Outback with a coexist bumper sticker on the back.

Once you have a car, it’s easy to get a driver’s license. Just use your people skills to chat up your 21 year old examiner and he will not notice that you put his life in danger several times over the course of the road test.  He will want to pass you because he’s 21 and he thinks you’re nice.

Helpful hint: Develop an appreciation for reggaeton.  It makes driving around all day (should this be what your job consists of) feel both more fun and more natural and it drowns out the sound of the planet and your soul simultaneously dying a little bit every time you turn the engine on.

NOTE socially, being in a car is different than being on the subway. You’re not supposed to stare at and evaluate everyone around you when you’re in a car, like you are supposed to on the subway. People in cars aren’t expecting to be looked at, and they don’t like it.

Tip #2 Assume everyone around you gets really angry when they drink and is drunk right now.

Assume this triply when you’re driving.

People in rural areas are often quite isolated, dont’ have adequate resources to address a variety of needs, and may turn to substances in order to cope. Of course this happens in cities as well, but people in rural areas are forced to interact with much fewer people in a given day and so they may be a little more gruff and rough about it. They may also be super excited to interact. Talk to people often because they are really interesting, but initiate or respond with caution.

Tip #3 Adjust your thinking and vocabulary regarding race

People liberally use the word “Hispanic” here and you must learn not to visibly flinch every time you hear it. They usually do mean Spanish as in from Spain. As I said in other posts, people who trace their ancestry to Spanish colonizers 400 years ago consider themselves Hispanic and definitely have hegemony in this town. There are complicated dynamics between them and Native people and Mexicans. White people are generally seen as other and outside of all of this. According to one source, black people are pretty much read as white.

Tip#4 Pretend to like dogs

Everyone has them and is really into them and you need to learn to pretend to feel the same way or everyone will hate you. It’s annoying at first, but after a while, you’ll probably have  somewhat internalized your performed affection for dogs and it will start to become less upsetting when they jump on you all the time everywhere you go, which will help you not be in a constant state of terrified/irritated fight-or-flight, which is better for your heart.

Tip #5  If at all possible, bring your community with you.

If they can’t move with you, make them visit all the time. And talk/email with them all the time, even though you are generally horrible at staying in touch and you can’t stand the phone more than anything. You will need to maintain these active connections to stay sane.

It is notoriously difficult to make friends in this place. People who are drawn to mountain desert towns tend to be pretty introverted and internal and are consumed with their own spiritual or whatever quests. Many such folks don’t love to stray outside of their social comfort zones to get to know and welcome new people, though there are of course many exceptions. It is thus recommended that you lie about how long you plan to stay in town (say you are here for good) so that people will be more likely to think it’s worth investing in a friendship. It will also be useful to you to familiarize yourself with the basics of your astrological chart. This is information people will want to know about you and it will help them decide if they want to be friends with you.  Also, it’s probably significantly easier to make friends if you live right downtown and drink a lot, so try that, too.

Tip #6 When bad things happen during the year, write them down and send them to city hall to be stuffed in a four-story tall puppet called Old Man Gloom that will then be burned in a large, cathartic ceremony that involves the whole town and is awesome.

Here’s what it looks like.

Tip #7 Riding your bike will be much more difficult than it was where you came from,  but ultimately worth it.

You will need tons of specific-to-this-area accessories to help your tires not be punctured by 70 thousand cactusy thorn-seed-things called goat heads every time you leave your house. Also, sometimes tumbleweeds get snarled in your tires. And there’s like no bike infrastructure. So be careful and be prepared to spend some money and feel lots of frustration.  But it’s freer and better than driving your new car all the time, and riding bikes always makes you like a place better.

Tip #8 Don’t panic if you start to lose your edge.

You might as well take advantage of all of the healing-ness and spiritual whatever available here. The witty, sharp, irreverence and curiosity to stay on top of the most interesting, innovative ideas and discourses happening in the world energy that served you so well in a big East Coast city will lie dormant and useless here, leaving you no choice but to feel kind of isolated and eventually explore other ways of connecting to the world, yourself, and others. So, go ahead and learn to read Tarot cards. Get body work. Talk about astrology and chakras. It will fall off of you as soon as you leave. But do stay really direct and fast in your interactions, cause that’s also valued here.

Tip #9 Adjust for the altitude

Cooking times for everything really are different and baking just won’t work at all.  Drink water all the time as you won’t feel thirsty, you’ll just suddenly become dehydrated and pass out and then it’ll be too late. And you won’t feel your sweat cause it evaporates right away. At first you may find it difficult to breathe just walking down the street or even eating. Also you will be absurdly drunk after one drink, so be careful when drinking, especially if you’re going to drive, which you are cause you live here. It’s better to be the one sober person on the road, than drunk with everyone else. Some people also get headaches from the altitude.  Altitude adjustment problems  go away in a few weeks, a couple months at the most. And then you have tons more oxygen-carrying blood cells than normal people and you become superhuman and can run really fast forever or jump a thousand feet at a time when you get back to sea level.

Also you might as well learn to ski because  you live on a mountain and it’s really fun.

Tip #10 Remind yourself as often as possible how amazingly you are handling this super hard transition  Most organisms die outside their natural habitat. So, way to still be alive. You’re the toughest. And you have lots of oxygen blood cells to show for it.

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