Coyote Crossing

Lunch Tuesday

This was for the best, you said, and I think
you were a little disappointed I agreed,
nodding against your shoulder in the parking lot.

A year since we met last, that day I loaded
a few last boxes into the Jeep, kitchen things
and what camping

Nipton

[At around seven o’clock I’ll be reading the bit below as an introduction to my writer’s group. Thought I’d share it with you here as well.]

The little house I moved into last year was 400 feet from the Southern Pacific’s main line between Las

Yates County

In my memory the bank was twice my height, sloping, a buff soil as washed-out in color as the condensing vapor on my breath. Tufts of grass fringed the blank soil at top and bottom. The little ridge wore stark skeletons of dormant staghorn sumac as

A year ago

Starflower was beginning to bloom near the beaver marsh. The remains of lady’s slipper blossoms rustled against their pedicels, fluttering as yet another rainstorm approached.

We came together and the skies opened up. My hand took hers and roads

About love

I have often wondered whether this love for the landscape, this ardent longing I feel for dissolution into the wild is not a symptom of some ancient hurt, a way to salve wounds that should have healed long ago.

I speak of kinship, of the shared

Chat transcript, 6/26/07

creekrnningnorth (3:35:43 AM): yes, I do sometimes talk to the air. Why do you ask?
creekrnningnorth (3:36:32 AM): there is air everywhere: one is thus never alone.
creekrnningnorth (3:37:00 AM): thin air in the fringes of space,
creekrnningnorth

In Antelope Valley

… (continues)

Storage Locker in Barstow

In this box, a set of dishes wrapped in shirts I’d forgotten I had.

In this box, stacks of books.

In this box, a set of screwdrivers, a circular saw still covered in sawdust. When was the last time I used it? Building the garden beds. Six years

Metaunderfoot

Erica caught the above photo of me taking this photo of a snake. If the snake has a photo of Erica taking this shot, then, um, it’ll bite its tail or… … (continues)

Can’t let this go, somehow

This.

Funny thing. Call me an asshole and I may wince, but I usually take a perverse glee in having gotten under someone’s skin. Call me an environazi extremist elitist and I feel like I’ve done my job correctly. But an aimless, bored group of

Desert Pavement

This wind is a tide. Plant your footsoles on the earth: the wind will scour the sand out from underneath, send you toppling backward into the holes it digs beneath your heels. It is relentless. It is patient. Sandgrain after wind-driven sandgrain

Conversations I’ll be avoiding in 2009

Talking to all different kinds of people is important, and I enjoy it most of the time. Modern life offers plenty of chances for insularity, parochiality, echochamberosity and related plaints, and it’s good to avoid those. And the exigencies of

Wee Thump Sunset

Slept on the ground last night in sub-freezing temperatures. Woke up surrounded by Joshua trees growing out of patches of snow. Drove with The Raven along Route 66. Ate lunch-dinner at the Bagdad Café.

Best Birthday Ever.

Also, please join me

Turning 49

I’m offline and sleeping on the cold, cold ground until my personal odometer clicks over. Enjoy the next few days, please.

In the meantime, I’m pleased and slightly befuddled to note that the RedBubble group American Southwest has named me a

2008

It all fell apart this year, the affected exoskeleton I’d thought of as my life: the garden and the art, the home, the writing. There was a moment this summer it all sank in. I had been Becky’s husband, the one who walked with Zeke out of the house

Not to scale

The Raven had come up to spend Thanksgiving in the desert, and we did. Rather than feasting, we whiled away that holiday with a long walk in the rainy creosote, watching dark winter storms trail through the Ivanpah Valley. Friday was taken up with

End of November

The valley here runs south to north. At sunset the shadow of the Clark and Ivanpah mountains creeps across the valley floor, a second hand marking the time in yards. From where I sit, a mile up the washed-out road to the Lucy Grays, I watch the

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

What IS this place?

All I can say, without going into all the gory details — and the details are gory, trust me — is that today has, without a doubt, been the worst day of my … (continues)