I'm a natural history and environmental writer, an editor and photographer. I've lived in upstate New York, the SF Bay Area, Washington, DC, the Mojave Desert, and Los Angeles. My writing has appeared in publications ranging from Camas and Orion to Bay Nature, California Wild, the Boston Globe, and about thirty daily papers nationwide when I was a syndicated garden writer for the Knight-Ridder chain. No, I never got to meet the talking car.
I've traveled extensively in the Mojave, Great Basin and Sonoran deserts, as well as in the steppes and slickrock country of the Colorado Plateau.
This blog has existed in one form or another since 2003. At first it was called Creek Running North, after Pinole Creek, near where I lived back then. I moved in 2008 and renamed the site Coyote Crossing, but about a thousand people* still link here under the old name.
My publicist tells me I should mention that my writing here has frequently been called the best on the Internet.
* May not actually equal 1000

All content Copyright © 2011 Chris Clarke. All Rights Reserved.
Banner painting by Carl S. Buell.
Note:Many old comments were lost in a database crash in 2008. Some conversations may seem to make less sense than they would have. A few will make more sense now.
Thanks for writing about my new watershed! The Mt. Eddy area is a sublime headwater area - alpine serpentinites, Cascade frogs, cobra lilies - that I’ve, alas, had no chance to revisit since moving to Trinity County. Come up for a hike someday!
These poems really pull at the heartstrings. It must be true that you need some sadness to write this good. I can’t imagine any happy poem feeling this good.
Btw, I had never been to Northern California. So I read these poems like I read many of your posts - with trusty google maps in terrain mode. Realized with surprise that a lot of this mountainous terrain is already covered by the google maps street view cameras!! There’s even street views from the smaller roads along the lake with names like Granite Peak Rd and Cedar Stock Rd