About Chris
(Photo by Nina)
Chris Clarke is a natural history and environmental writer, an editor and photographer.
Born in Upstate New York in the very early 1960s, Chris moved to the West Coast in 1982. He spent much of the 1980s pursuing an interest in botany and horticulture, working in nurseries and on landscaping crews in the San Francisco Bay Area and in the environs of Washington, DC.
Chris began writing professionally in 1989 for Terrain, a small non-profit monthly environmental publication in Berkeley, CA. He took over the editor’s post there in 1992. By the time he left in 1997 Terrain had acquired a reputation for incisive, intelligent, and iconoclastic writing. Chris has since worked for a number of environmental news publications in print, online and radio, most prominent among them the Earth Island Journal. He’s also been a nationally syndicated garden writer with the Knight Ridder chain, his column generally appearing under the heading “The Irascible Gardener.” His resume is here.
Chris’ writing has appeared in publications ranging from Camas and Orion to Bay Nature, California Wild, the New Internationalist, Berkeley Insider and the East Bay Monthly, and about thirty daily papers nationwide.
It was in the mid-1990s that Chris’ fondness for the desert southwest, nascent since he first visited as an adult in the early 80s, blossomed into an obsession. He’s traveled extensively in the Mojave, Great Basin and Sonoran deserts, as well as in the steppes and slickrock country of the Colorado Plateau. His aridland obsession notwithstanding, Chris also bears a great fondness for more well-watered landscapes, the mountains of coastal and northern California and the Sierra Nevada in particular.
In 2003 Chris launched his first blog, Creek Running North, which over the next five years won acclaim from a wide range of readers in the science, political, essayist, and pet-owner blogging communities. His writing there was frequently called the best on the Internet.
From 1989 until 2008 Chris lived in the East Bay with his ex-wife, Becky Lum. Much of that time was spent in the company of their dog, Zeke, who died of advanced old age in early 2007. Chris and Becky divorced amicably in 2008 and remain close. Walking With Zeke: A familiar story, Chris’ chronicle of their last years with Zeke, was published in 2008. Subsequent to the divorce, Chris left the Bay Area — his home of a quarter century — closed Creek Running North after a five-year run, and moved to the Mojave Desert. His current blog, Coyote Crossing, was begun after a few months in the desert. Chris currently resides in Los Angeles and is planning to return to the desert to settle permanently sometime in mid-2010.
Aside from Walking With Zeke, Chris has also published A Tapetum Knowledge, a collection of his poetry. He is currently working on a book on Joshua trees, which will be based on over a decade of research.
Comments
Chris,
Andrew Sullivan introduced me to CC. I am grateful. I’ve needed this mix of
Grace and Fun.
And I’m eager to read of your days with Zeke. I’ve got two beloved older Jack Russells
who have cared for me during the hardest days of losing my parents. My focus is on
showing them all my love for as long as we have left together.
Bless you, Frank
Hi Chris,
My friend Anne Burson has a non-profit animal sanctuary in northern AZ - last week I put up a new video on their You Tube account about the coyote met and greet in the early evening. I had never heard anything like it before, thought you might be interested.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY62obv3fAU
Chris, I love the Avatar-themed LOLcat that you placed on Michael Berube’s page. Any chance you could post it here so I could send it on to some friends? It’s hilarious.
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