For most of seventeen years, Donna and Larry Charpied have been fierce
opponents of those corporate and political interests which would turn Eagle
Mountain into a megadump. They could in fact be called, without
exaggeration, the megadump proponent's worst nightmare. Yet, when the
Charpieds go to sleep at night, they don't dream, nightmarishly or
otherwise, about winning battles in Federal Court, or even about slaying
corporate dragons. Instead, what they dream about is jojoba.

	Simmondsia chinensis is a plant which likes it dry and rocky. Not a
particularly handsome shrub, it is a hard crop to cultivate for a stingy
yield of oil which has current market only in the cosmetic industry.
However, jojoba is also surpassingly pure, so much so that it is on the
congressional list of strategic agricultural materials. Were the plant
more cooperative in cultivation, say its admirers, it would revolutionize
the chemistry, and quality, of high speed machine oils.

	In 1982, the Charpieds left Santa Barbara for 10 acres of dry, rocky ground
in Chuckwalla Valley. That's where they could try their luck at growing and
studying jojoba. Their agricultural ambitions, though, have always gone far
beyond just squeezing jojoba oil for use in shampoo and facial creams. They
have worked all these years to develop a more stable strain of the plant,
one that could be cultivated without the risk of losing an entire crop to
the species' temperamentalness.
"We wanted a livelihood that was low-impact and sustainable," said Donna in
recollection why she and Larry took up jojoba farming, a small flare of
idealism showing as she further declared, "and if we succeed in our efforts,
this plant oil could make an important contribution to reducing our
dependency on petroleum."

	 The Charpieds are well suited to their rough and remote environment.
Although not the least bit antisocial, they very much appreciate the quiet
where they live, and are unashamedly pleased to admit they cherish the great
distance they are from the urgencies and emergencies of metropolita.
How they live and what they live for is very important to them, and if their
lifestyle appears to be a stark contrast to the growth-obsessed mainstream,
that's because it is. To brand them as neo-primitives, however, would be a
mistake. They don't renounce modernity or its technical affinities merely
for the sake of it; in fact, they consider themselves as much a part of the
Twenty-first Century as the next guy, and they take great pride in their
discriminating use of its technology.

	Probably it's the word "discriminating" that most sets the Charpieds apart
from the mainstream. "We have choices in the methods we use for survival and
even prosperity," they observe, and are firm in the corollary that, "we
should never choose a course of action for the mere expedience of it, or for
profit reasons when the impacts from our action are either uncertain, or we
can expect them to be severe."

	 Those who have come up against them in battle over matters of
discriminating land use know what the Charpieds believe. It's what makes
them such stiff opposition, even against such powerful forces as those
behind the Eagle Mountain dump. As history shows so clearly, no enemy is
more inexhaustible than the one who fights for principle rather than
personal gain.