When I became a graduate student in 1979, I saw an announcement requesting student labor to help renovate the center. Since I was already a bit of a desertphile and was proposing to do my research in the desert, I decided to sign up. I got a call from the center coordinator Alan Romspert, who said, “OK, here’s the deal: meet us at the loading dock on Friday night. We’ll pick you up, take you there and bring you back Sunday night, and we’ll take care of the food.”

I believe it was Oct. 5, 1979. It was about 105 degrees that week. I was a city boy and not acclimated to working hard labor in the desert. My first job was to help hand dig a four-foot-deep sewer trench. I was assisting then caretaker Jerry Gates. He was a very colorful individual and carried a .22 pistol in his belt – a skinny fellow with a billy goat beard who spoke in an odd manner. I later learned he had part of his jaw and tongue removed due to cancer. I thought, “they’re sticking me down in this hole with this guy that’s all dressed head to toe in denim, with a pistol on his belt and a big cowboy hat with a huge hawk feather sticking out, and I’m hot in my shorts and T-shirt.”

The two of us were using big steel bars to pry rocks loose while digging out the trench. After about three or four hours, I went to lift a big rock, blacked out and fell back down into the trench. I don’t think it was a heat stroke, but obviously I had overexerted myself. Jerry, who seemed so scrawny and insignificant to me, pulled me out. He got some others and they dragged me to the dining hall and laid me out on a couch, and pumped me full of water and salt tablets. That was my first exposure, my first day at the Desert Studies Center.

I continued to come back for the duration of my graduate studies. [Fulton graduated with a master’s degree in biology in 1984.] The bath and shower buildings and some other buildings were constructed by student labor. I learned to lay concrete blocks and to apply stucco. I had already learned some carpentry skills from my father, but I learned a great deal more working with the trades people from campus.