"I have an assignment for you."
My boss, Lorenzo, looked over his bifocals and stroked his graying beard. His desk took up 90% of the cramped office. I sat, squashed, in a chair wedged between the desk and the wall. Grey light filtered in through the single, barred window. The County Manager's office had once been a laundromat.
"I think you'll like it," he tried again, ignoring my crossed arms and scowl. "We want you to start up a recycling program."
"Because I'm white?" I complained. "White people in Santa Fe, Dixon and Abiquiu recycle so I should be the new recycling bunny?" I was still angry I'd been passed up for Recreation Director despite my recent succesful debut coordinating Rio Arriba's leagues.
"Because we need a recycling program!" Lorenzo barked back. "Do some research! Find out if curbside recycling is feasible in Rio Arriba!"
Back at my desk in my windowless closet, I contemplated the phone. I didn't know anything about recycling. I had been building playgrounds and ball-fields.
I remembered that my best friend, Didi, had put her bottles and boxes out to be picked up for recycling the last time I visited. She lived in Kalamazoo. I called up Kalamazoo County. "Hi!" I exclaimed. "My name's Lauren and I work for Rio Arriba County in New Mexico. We're thinking of starting a recycling program. I wonder if you could tell me how to do a feasibility study? How does your recycling program work?"
"Do you mean curbside recycling?" asked the woman at the other end.
I thought about our thousands of miles of unpaved washboard roads. "What curbs?"
There was a long silence. "What's your geographic area and how many people do you have in your county?" she inquired.
"We have 5,858 square miles and about 41,000 people."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, startled. "We have 3 square miles and 230,000 people. And we just gave up on curbside because our population density wouldn't support it."
"Oh, dear," I told her. "That doesn't sound promising!"
A few hours later, Patricio, the Planning and Zoning Director, called. "Hey," he said. "The boss says you're recycling. Could you go to El Rito tonight and do a presentation?"
"Me??!" I asked incredulously. My first live Bunny Hop! "I don't even know how!
"I have some slides you can use," he told me. "I'll run through 'em with you, que no?, You got to show 'em how to separate cardboard, plastic and glass. There are certain colors we don't take. We only accept plain cardboard, paper's gotta be bundled and we only accept a few plastics. There's a bin in Abiquiu they can use. It's clearly labeled."
I didn't say anything.
"Really," he said. "You shouldn't have no trouble at all."
*************************
Later that evening, I sat at a table in a small meeting room at the clinic in El Rito, a tiny village 40 minutes north of Espanola. At least 50 people had packed into the room. Nobody seemed interested in a presentation on recycling.
"We already do that!" shouted an older Anglo man I'd never seen before. "We don't need you to tell us how. We just want to know why you are planning to locate a landfill here in El Rito!"
The crowd was made up of local Hispanics, a few Anglo hippies who had lived there for decades, and one or two wealthy Anglo retirees who had just moved in. The retirees were outraged by the lack of services offered in rural, impoverished Rio Arriba.
Nobody had mentioned a landfill to me.
"I don't know anything about that," I responded. "I can ask what's going on and get back to you."
"Your commissioners are a bunch of corrupt bastards!" hollered the belligerent newcomer. "They want to put their landfill here because they don't live here. They're ruining my property value!"
"We have to put our garbage somewhere," pointed out Cal, one of the hippies. I knew him from Green Party rallies. Rio Arriba's entire Green Party seemed to be present. There must have been at least four or five of them. "I try to throw away as little as possible," offered Cal. "I shop for my hairbrushes at the Co-op in Santa Fe because they don't use packaging."
"Why don't you put your g-ddamn dump out where there's no people???" demanded the rabble-rouser. "You must have thousands of miles to choose from!"
"Hmmm..." I mused. "I'm not privvy to any of the planning around landfills. But I can't imagine they would place it here out of spite. You know, I've worked on a few other projects and I can tell you from my own experience that most of the land out here is owned by the Forest Service and the BLM. In fact, just a few weeks ago, I had to organize a meeting to prevent the BLM from shutting down the Velarde ball-fields. For some reason, they thought it was an eyesore. The BLM won't allow the county to use any of its land for housing, recreation or landfills."
"She's right about that!" exclaimed Virgil, a tall thin, Hispanic rancher with boots and a cowboy hat. "I gotta fight with them all the time over grazing permits. This whole county was supposed to have been a land grant according to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago. But they always come up with reasons to interfere with our traditions like grazing and wood gathering. How're we supposed to fuel our homes?" Other villagers nodded and murmured their agreement.
About 70-80% of the County's land was now held by the federal government. These were the grantees common lands, usually used for grazing small herds, hunting or collecting wood, clay or river rock.
I turned off the overhead projector. "I have an idea," I suggested. "I know our commissioners and they're not corrupt. They want to build landfills away from people, but the BLM won't work with them. But I know how you can help!"
The angry man sat down. A few villagers uncrossed their arms and leaned forward in their chairs.
"Why don't you circulate a petition praising the Commissioners and the County Manager. Be really effusive. Don't hold back. Call them all geniuses or something. Tell them you appreciate their hard work trying to find space for landfills away from human habitation and demand that the BLM stop obstructing their efforts."
"Yeah!" shouted someone. "They got plenty of room for rich folks to mine gravel but they don't got no room at all for a few sheep or cows!"
"They care about elk more than they care about us plebe! A few members of the audience laughed.
John jumped to his feet. I knew him from Green Party meetings. He was a wildly disheveled computer whiz. His shirt was perpetually buttoned unevenly. His long grey hair and beard went untrimmed. His face glowed with anticipation. "This'll be fun!" he told the crowd. "Let's put a committee together to plan an action. We'll let Lauren finish her presentation and we won't include her. We don't want to get her in any trouble. I bet we can gather hundreds of signatures for our petition from El Rito and Ojo Caliente. We can get one copy to the paper and present one at the commission meeting in a few weeks."
The audience applauded and a few people volunteered for the committee. John, Virgil, a few ranchers and the angry man all raised their hands. Then they sat down and looked at me expectantly.
I turned on the projector. Cal asked, "Do you recycle?"
"Well," I admitted. "Not yet. I don't have a way to get all that stuff to the bin."
"I work at the College," offered Cal. "I don't mind coming and picking it up from you once a week."
"Wow!" I exclaimed. "That would be great! Thanks! I'll start recycling right away."
I briefly explained recycling criteria and procedures. When I left, it was 10 pm. The Milky Way was splattered chaotically across the sky, interrupted only by shadows of mesas and mountains. A full moon caused the sand to glow.
"I gotta telescope," offered someone. "Let's get together next week for the meteor showers. You wanna come?" he asked me. "You can bring your family!"
"I'd love to," I told him. When I pulled out, my headlights shined on a gaggle of men excitedly huddling in front of a car. Virgil and John waved at me. I waved back.
I drove slowly to avoid deer.
The next morning Patricio called. "How'd it go?" he asked me. "Any trouble?"
"No," I answered. "None at all. They're pretty excited about recycling."
Lorenzo called later that day. "How was the meeting in El Rito?" he asked. "Everything go smoothly?"
"Yeah," I agreed. "It went very well. They're planning some sort of recycling event, I think."
I was working with a group of women in the northern villages on plans for a community-built straw bale house to be used for a daycare (the daycare would eventually work out but the house would not) and had forgotten all about the potential landfill. "Good," he said. "Recycling is a good topic for you. We'll have you do some more presentations. You get in less trouble that way."
I went about my business, avoiding recycling presentations whenever possible. A few weeks later, I bounced into his office to inquire about a public housing unit to temporarily house the daycare.
"Hi!" I greeted. "Good morning! How are you?"
Lorenzo looked up from the newspaper he was reading and peered over his bi-focals at me. I was getting The Look.
"Did you perhaps forget to tell me about something that happened in El Rito?" he asked me, showing me an article.
The usually hostile local paper had published a two-page article about a petition signed by the residents of El Rito and Ojo Caliente, demanding more cooperation from the BLM. "Apparently, they called me a genius," he informed me, puzzled. "The commissioners, too. They want the BLM to give us some land for a dump away from human habitation."
"Oh, yeah1" I exclaimed. "I forgot about that! When I got to El Rito, they were upset about a landfill or something. I didn't know anything about the landfill, but I assumed nobody would mind if I got them to help us with the BLM."
Lorenzo tried to look stern. "Next time you run into a problem I want you to tell me about it. I need you to keep me informed."
"Okay," I said, already thinking about daycares.
When I left the office, I bumped into Alfredo, the Commission Chairman, in the parking lot. "Nice job in El Rito," he commented. "It's novel to be accused of intelligence by the paper."
I hesitated. "I forgot to tell you about it," I explained.
"We're going to meet with the BLM to negotiate for land on Monday," he informed me. "Be there."
On Monday, I waited for Alfredo and company at the Onate Center, a museum-like round, pink building, inexplicably built off the highway between Espanola and Taos to commemorate the coming of the conquistadore. There was a statue in front depicting Onate on a horse. The soldier had one foot. Indians from a nearby pueblo had sawed the other one off in protest.
A few beefy BLM officials sat across the room from me, glaring. Their necks were turning already turning red, and I hadn't said anything yet. I crossed my legs and opened my brief case, examining some of the playground designs I'd stuffed in it before leaving the house. I hoped my power suit and heels made me look like a lawyer.
"We don't know what happened in El Rito," one of them accused menacingly. "But we know that you did it."
Alfredo entered flanked by his army. Lorenzo and Patricio were with him along with several other department heads and my friend, Santiago, a real lawyer. Santiago's long hair was tied in a ponytail. His face was hidden behind a bushy mustache and aviator glasses. In his jeans, boots and leather jacket, he looked more like a revolutionary than a lawyer.
We took our seats at the table. The beefy, blonde, BLM team sat across from Alfredo and his entourage. I got up and brought Alfredo a cup of tea. I didn't offer any to our guests. Red splotches appeared on their faces.
We took our places at the large rectangular table. BLM officials sat on one side. Rio Arriba County officials sat on the other.
"Good afternoon," Alfredo greeted them. "Thank you for coming." Then he turned to me, his lips twitching. I wondered what sort of prank he was planning.
"Lauren will open our meeting by summarizing the history of federal land swaps in Rio Arriba."
"Me???" I squeaked, sitting up straight. Now it was my turn to grow red.
"Please," he gestured at the briefcase. "I'm sure you'll summarize succinctly for our guests." Santiago crossed his feet in front of him and his arms behind his head, smiling. He waited for the show to begin.
I opened my briefcase, neatly stacking papers in piles: playground designs in one stack, my daughter's scribblings in another. I picked up a particularly colorful scribbling and pretended to closely examine it.
"In 1848, the federal government adopted the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago, ending the Mexican American War," I began. "Like other treaties with indigenous peoples, it was never honored...