Every Friday and Saturday night at 7pm at three locations in the park - Black Rock, Jumbo Rocks and Cottonwood - a Ranger does an hour-long presentation on a topic of their choice. Rangers are pretty cool. Each has a handful of topics of specialty. I went to one with Ranger Lorna Shuman, who has degrees in science and history. She's been at the park for fifteen years and spent a few years gathering creation stories from the Cahuilla and Chemehuevi elders in the area.

I gave a presentation as a resident of the parks Artist In Residency program. It was a Saturday, when Ranger Sarah Jones usually does her night sky presentation as a way to get over her fear of telescopes. I gave a presentation on the project I was working on with the park. It was the first time I gave a presentation about my artwork to a non-art crowd. It was a tough crowd, but everyone signed the project mailing list. There were lots of looks of confusion. Luckily, the drunk ones were uninterested. As I work more towards methods of social engagement, I find that art jargon often gets in the way of a connection with an audience. Overall, it was good practice to feel those moments when the audience felt lost. It gave me a sense of where to adjust the language.