My name is Gabriel Ysidoro Delgado. I am from a town called Orangevale; just outside of Sacramento, Ca.; it’s just before getting up to the foothills of the Sierra Mountains. Since I was a kid, I’ve always been known for running everywhere. I didn’t even receive my license to drive till I was 18 because I didn’t see the use of a car when I had my legs. As a boy I have always enjoyed the outdoors: going on hikes with my parents, fishing with the Old Man and my brother, going on family camp trips, and running to places only my feet can get me.
Once I got my vehicle I realized I can go a little further. So I started driving up to Lake Tahoe and backpacking the back-country from there. I got my first outdoor job as an SCA member working in the Mojave National Preserve under the Park Service. From there, I knew what I wanted to do in life. I got so into backpacking and the environment when I was in Junior College and after Mojave, I decided to go to Humboldt State University and study Environmental Sciences: Ecological Restoration.
As a student, I continuously backpacked with my friends in the Northern territory of California. In the Summer times, I guided rafts full of people on their vacation down some of the most dangerous rivers of California: the Middle Fork American, the “Killer” Kern River, the south Fork of the American, the North Fork of the Yuba, and the Merced River. After Humboldt, I knew I was going to have to get a job in my degree, so I found a habitat restoration position in San Francisco. I began right after school, and continue to. However, the City did something to me that I never thought it would—it changed the way I looked at people. in disgust of myself, I knew that I needed the outdoors to recuperate from the images the City projected towards me. So, here I am; waiting to start the internship with a place that began it all, in a place that I love the most—The Desert.
