My friend, the Ecologist

I just received word last night from one of my oldest friends (old as in, we've been friends for 12 years, not as in she's ancient, although she will ALWAYS be 9 months older than me!) that not only was she accepted into UCLA's Geography Phd program, but that she received an awesome four-year fellowship to conduct research with the Jordana Basin Long Term Ecological Research program. She will get to spend a portion of the next four years in the northern Chihuahuan Desert where the program examines "desertification dynamics" - or how deserts actively happen and exist. The group looks at how space, time, history, "transport vectors" and "environmental drivers" interact with structures of vegetation to determine "ecosystem dynamics." I'm so happy for her and definitely a little jealous (having read a sufficient amount of Mike Davis and had one too many daydreams about different educational directions I could have followed) - I suppose I'll have to be satisfied with getting to visit her in the New Mexico desert, where we will eat a bunch of peyote buttons and go on a transcendent spirit quest like the ones all of my favorite characters from Lost get to go on all the time.