Charly Mijares spent a lot of his childhood in the outdoors, but it wasn’t the glaciated peaks of Yosemite’s high country that were his first stomping grounds. From the time he was ten years old, he remembers, he would help his father weed out pomegranate orchards, train horses, and build irrigation ditches. He says, “In the summertime from 6AM until nightfall, I was in the fields.” Charly grew up surrounded by agriculture, with a dairy across the street from his house and rows of alfalfa and cotton on all sides.
When he was attending Dos Palos High School, he would wear a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and an elaborately adorned belt buckle to class. He recalls, “The first time I rode a horse was when I was three, and I started training them when I was in the fourth grade.” To his classmates and teachers he was a bronco-riding cowboy. Even among his classmates in rural Dos Palos, his love of the outdoors, horses, and agriculture stood out. ARC teammate and friend, Jesus Alejandre, remembers that “Charly was recognized as the school’s genuine cowboy.”
In high school Charly joined ARC for weekend trips and participated in the Yosemite summer course in 2011 (both his sister and cousin had previously graduated from the same 40-day course). It was no surprise to his ARC instructors that his poem was entitled “Cowboy Up.” He read the poem in Yosemite Valley in front of the Park’s Superintendent on Day 38 of the summer course and told a reporter at the time, “It’s pretty intense because I actually put my emotions into it.” Charly added, “My real emotions.” For many ARC students the openness and vulnerability of sharing their stories to an audience at Voices of Youth is a challenge, and for Charly, as a cowboy, it was an important lesson. He wrote, “I used to…hide my emotions from everybody. Now I know that it is important to express myself.”
During the ARC summer course, Charly was exposed to new kinds of jobs in the outdoors. He recently said, “Through ARC so many opportunities were opened up to me. I met the Superintendent and several Yosemite Wilderness Rangers.” One of the Rangers that Charly connected with was Jesse Chakrin, the Director of UC Merced’s Yosemite Leadership Program (YLP). YLP is a two-year program that promotes environmental advocacy and social change. Charly says, “I realized that if I dedicated more time to school, I could join YLP and go to UC Merced.” Participating in ARC and being immersed in Yosemite gave Charly a goalpost to work toward and a reason to focus on his studies. After ARC he said, “I knew I wanted to become an environmental steward.”
Today Charly is just that: an ARC alumnus, a YLP graduate, and a mounted Yosemite National Park Ranger and Packer. In the summertime, in between academic semesters, he patrols the wilderness, checks wilderness permits, assists with trail maintenance, removes campfire rings, and much more. Charly also helps manage the welfare of about 30 horses and 70 mules which the Park Service uses for packing and supply trips into the Yosemite backcountry. “I grew up riding horses, but this is even better,” he says. “I get to do what I love in the most beautiful place on earth: Yosemite.”
Charly has trouble imagining what path he would have taken if he hadn’t participated in ARC. “Without ARC I wouldn’t have gone to UC Merced or have become a Yosemite Ranger…. I might still be working in the fields.” Charly will be graduating from UC Merced in December 2019. Afterward, he is excited to find full-time employment with Yosemite. He says, “If it wasn’t for my upbringing of being a vaquero (cowboy) and being in [ARC and YLP], I wouldn’t be the cowboy conservationist who I am today.”