Yesterday a blue-eyed storm blew through Los Angeles. The wind had been out of the desert for some days, calm and a bit warm, and then Tuesday morning we were buffeted. It got cold, for Los Angeles, and the wind reached 30 miles an hour at
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Tonight I ran, and cursed this aging frame
each mile run cursing harder than the last
each breath more labored, every pace the same
and sorry degradation, milestones passed
chained to my ankles. Streetlit sky a sieve,
the sodden city noise damping
A shriek from outside, a sickening noise almost inaudible, and then another I couldn’t identify. Tires on a curb? And then angry shouts, a deep, bellowing male voice, a woman crying hysterically.
I’d been dressing for a run. I went outside.
An
… (continues)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.