Just deserts

Danette Goulet

CORONA DEL MAR -- He doesn’t have to cross a burning desert to become

an Eagle Scout, but 16-year-old Mark Pomerantz does have to create one.

Before a Boy Scout can earn the coveted rank of Eagle Scout, he must

plan and complete a service project benefiting a nonprofit organization.

Most local scouts might work with the Back Bay or Environmental Nature

Center, but Mark went to his biology teacher, Dale Ghere.

Ghere, an Eagle Scout himself, wanted Mark to create a desert

arboretum in the quad at Corona del Mar High School.

The arboretum, Ghere said, could help him better educate students

about desert plant life.

That was nearly two years ago. As Mark prepares to enter his junior

year at Corona del Mar and earn his Eagle Scout status, his project will

be finished next weekend when everything is planted.

“What I’m doing here is to enhance the campus and to learn while I do

it,” Mark said. “They gave me specific things to plant so that students

can come out and observe them.”

But the aspiring Eagle Scout took the project one step further. He

talked his friend Dustin Hodges, who is not a Scout, into painting a

mural of a desert scene behind the arboretum.

Although it will be the third mural at the school, it is the first

painted by students.

“He wanted to do it. He’s a very talented artist,” Mark said.

Dustin, 16, took a few weeks to map out the mural and another week to

paint it. The result is a spectacular desert sunset.

Dustin had another student, Ben Inouye, paint the cactuses, and Mark

worked on the solid color background.

“It’s pretty cool,” Dustin said of the opportunity to paint. “Maybe my

kids will get to see it one day.”