In Arizona and New Mexico if someone loses consciousness and hits the pavement awhile they get life threatening burns. It's crazy.
I met an old drunk outside of Phoenix many years ago who passed out on top of a fire ant colony for a few hours and woke up covered head to toe in attacking angry ants. It's an inhospitable place!
In my early twenties I was looking for a field of work that was semi environmentally friendly. I had grown up in southern Alberta where it's all factory farming, mono culture crops, and O&G. For a minute (as a prairie kid) I thought tree planting might be a good way. Basic research even back then showed me that young women who expect to get pregnant within the next fifteen years should not be handling seedlings because the fungicides and pesticides dusted on the root balls are so toxic. Then there's the GMO monoculture of the species of trees they're replanting with.
End of the day I didn't feel like contributing to the next wave of suburb and luxury condo developments. Rednecks always like to say "they grow back" when we talk about protecting old growth forests and it's obvious that trees (individually) can be grown on a given plot of land (like wheat in a season on the plains)... But the conversation ends when we talk about how it takes millennia to grow the type of environmental diversity primal forests have established.
Oh no! Pine Beatles and drought and other things are affecting our crop of trees! Who could've predicted such a thing!?? Bailout please.