The harshness of desert life is demonstrated by these six abandoned homes

My family and I accepted a goat-herding position in the middle of nowhere last winter. Believe it or not, goat-herding is still a legitimate job in the US. One of the most difficult times in our lives occurred throughout it. It was miles and miles of nothing, and when I say “middle of nowhere” I really mean it: there were just a few scatted, partially occupied homes.

Nevertheless, attempts to resolve it continued despite that. The abandoned homes that some hardy people had formerly occupied gave us a firsthand look at the hardships of remote desert living. I frequently questioned how it was even feasible to access some of the buildings because they were so far away. The roads leading to the buildings hardly qualified as roads, and the dwellings were separated from the closest good road by deep channels called “washes” that were carved by seasonal flooding.

We visited during the winter when the majority of the days reached the 60s and most of the nights were below freezing. The heat of the summer would have been intolerable.

We were surprised at a few of the structures that had obviously been built as family residences, whereas many of the houses merely resembled hermit hovels. Walking through and around them was unsettling as you tried to picture what they were like before the elements and vandals completely destroyed and dismantled them. Additionally, since this was in the center of cartel territory, we frequently worried that some of the homes might be rented out to sketchy “tenants” (fortunately this was never the case).

Off-grid living has recently gained popularity across the globe, but it’s clear that the savage American southwest desert is not the ideal location for it.

#1 A foreboding sign alerting you that you are going nowhere

#2 View from the elevated location known as “Black Rock Lookout.”

#3 The first home

#4 A balcony-style porch

#5 The house or the trailer, which came first?

#6 A wonderful addition was the diagonal cedar slats. Likewise, the mirror’s subtly inscribed message

#7 including a wood burner for the chilly nights in the desert

Dwelling number two

#8 The benefits of this residence were free to air conditioning and beautiful plywood

#9 There is broken glass and a rat’s nest included with the sofa sleeper

Residence three

#10 The closest one was this one

#11 The best carpet is a vintage, low-pile carpet

Residence four

#12 This one had its own water tower and was an off-grid utopia, so we called it “The Adobe Complex”

#13 Unlike the shanties previously displayed, this place has a lot of potentials

#14 For easy fire starting, there was also a sizable stack of pre-made newspaper logs

Residence five

#15 Without a certain, they constructed this one with asbestos

Six-house subdivision

#16 This was the most depressing. A lovely family home with lots of possibilities

#17 Ceramic tile was used as the entrance’s flooring, and cheerful, vibrant colors were used all over

#18 The family once enjoyed watching sunrises and sunsets in the lovely sunroom. It might have made a lovely plant room

#19 The solarium encircled the building

#20 The wall-mounted poster gave away the fact that this was an exercise facility

#21 The room used by kids

#22 Discovered on the building’s one-side concrete base

A monument

#23 Possibly the strangest thing we discovered was this. We lifted up this massive memorial sculpture that was laying on its side on a small mountaintop

The words were “Murio por nada,” which means “died for nothing.”