ABF Member Spotlight: Lizbeth Bárcena

What is your favorite location in the Park?

The view from Font’s Point of the barren mud hills, fingering off into a dizzying labyrinth of an impassible landscape known as the Borrego Badlands, is my favorite place in the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. I am always eager to share this majestic view of sandy and silty sediment shaped by wind, water, and time with everyone who visits me, and I make it a must-see on their visit. It never fails to disappoint even the most non-desert-enthusiast of my family members, adding to the profound effect of this place.

What is your favorite season in the Park, and why?

Summer is my favorite season in the Anza-Borrego Desert, not because the temperature gauge reminds me that I’m in a desert and the rain shadow is no joke, but because wildlife and plants display adaptive ingenuity. My curiosity and respect for creatures and florae doing what they do best–surviving– fills me with hope and vigor. I get nostalgic as soon as the first cool evening arrives in early Fall, causing me to miss the hot nights and finding that this longing enriches my awareness of my surroundings.

Tell us about your first experience in the Park.

My first experience at ABDSP was a camping trip in July to celebrate my birthday. We pitched our tent and set up our new gear at the Borrego Palm Canyon Campground campsite and were ready to be enveloped by the hot weather and quiet. The morning of my birthday, we hiked up to the palm oasis and encountered five or six bighorn sheep up close and a group of sheep counters smiling cheek-to-cheek from atop a boulder, cementing my love for this desert, the wildlife, and stewardship.

If you could be any desert animal, what would it be and why?

I’m a terrible singer, but if I could be any desert animal, I would be a Coyote because of their hauntingly beautiful howls and yips that echo across the desert. Sometimes, it’s one or a few Coyotes howling, and their sound bounces off canyon walls and fills the stillness of the night with song, creating the auditory illusion of being more numerous through various resonances and pitches– the ‘Beau Geset effect.’ They seem to sing to me and communicate that all life is interconnected in the desert.

How long have you been visiting the Park?

I’ve been coming to the Anza-Borrego State Park since 2007. I came to experience the extreme landscape and explore as many hikes, campsites, vistas, and accommodations in town between spring, summer, and fall, discovering that the more I learned about its ecology and geology, the more I found myself repeating trails and seeing new things about them. It’s never entirely the same adventure, even after 17+ years.