EMILY BROOKS IS AN ENVIRONMENTAL ANTHROPOLOGIST who researches the Western Colorado Desert (the part of the Sonoran Desert that includes the Anza-Borrego). For years, she’s been collecting field data on communities living in hostile conditions. Over dinner at Carmelita’s, one of Borrego Springs’ popular Mexican restaurants, Emily brings me up to speed: seventy percent of local groundwater is pumped for agriculture, twenty for resorts, and ten percent for municipal and ecosystem uses. A 2015 report by the US Geological Survey published these figures. “There may be only twenty years left in the aquifer at current use,” Emily says.

      She describes the human tendency to overdraw ground-water in the desert as a sort of water hangover. “People still want lawns and swimming pools, but they’re facing the end of groundwater. Some don’t believe that the big water projects in California are really over. Down near the Salton Sea, people talk about desalination and a pipeline from the coast. They’re holding out for something from the outside to save them. You don’t hear that so much around the rest of the state anymore.” While other Californians discuss conservation and small-scale solutions, the little communities in what Emily calls the “less sexy deserts” like the Anza-Borrego still hope for the bigger fix.

      Generational differences have emerged in Emily’s data. “Some people moved out to tiny towns all along the border of the state park because they love wilderness or craved the quiet or could afford it out here. Now they’ve aged in place, and some are stuck. They may live in areas that are potentially environmentally at risk, but they can’t afford to move. An entire generation might be facing an end to their community coinciding with the end of their own lives.”

      Later Emily and I visit Carlee’s, a restaurant-bar with drinks named for the desert: Cactus Cooler, Water Hazard, and Flash Flood. One of the town’s most popular bands, Elevation 597, is playing covers of popular songs, some contemporary, some dating back to the days when my siblings and I frequented the pool at the Palms Resort. The musicians balance their gigging with day jobs, and Emily knows them all: the lead guitarist is a former park ranger, the lead singer a yoga instructor, the rhythm guitarist a business owner and manager whose voice, his wife confides in us, wows the ladies in town.