Season 0 Episode 4: About Chris Clarke
In this episode, Alicia points out that despite Chris's delusions of popularity, there are people who don't know who he is. Hilarity ensues. Transcript Season 0, Episode 4: Who is Chris? Chris Clarke: This podcast is made possible by our supporters at Patreon, who give us the resources we need to produce each episode, you can join their ranks at 90milesfromneedles.com/patreon. Alicia Pike: So Chris, when you invited me to be a part of this podcast, I naturally assumed I would need an introduction, but I figured everybody knew who you were. You have a storied background in being a desert defender. I figured everybody’d just naturally, like, “oh, it's Chris Clarke.” I don't necessarily think that's true. I think out of the 7 billion people on this planet, there are a few who don't know who you are. CC: Good point. What should we do about that? AP: Maybe we should do a little special introduction to Chris Clarke. [Intro music] Bouse Parker: The sun is a giant blow torch aimed at your face. There ain't no shade nowhere. Let's hope you brought enough water. It's time for 90 Miles from Needles, the desert protection podcast, with your hosts, Chris Clarke and Alicia Pike. AP: So who are you, Chris? CC: I am just this guy. I live near Joshua tree with my wife, Lara and my dog, Heart and 14,000 fathead minnows in a former swimming pool. Are there specific things you think we ought to talk about? AP: I think your background in ways that you've been building momentum to get to where you are today. CC: Well, my first visit to the desert, I was six years old. It was the summer, 1966. I have a few really vivid memories of it. I remember camping at Park Moabi, south of Needles on the Colorado River and being sick. Because it had just been so hot and I'd been drinking gallons of really bad theoretically fruit flavored stuff, an inauspicious introduction to the desert. But there were things like going to Petrified Forest National Monument — at the time it was before it was a national park — and seeing petrified logs and the Painted Desert, which was absolutely breathtaking. Even as a little kid, I was like, “wow, this exists?” It was so different from the small towns of upstate New York, where I grew up. 16 years later, I was 22 years old and heading to California, sitting in a Greyhound bus that was heading west on interstate 80, going across the Great Salt Desert at night, and just got a sense of something immense and awesome out there. And the next day Northern Nevada looked incredibly desolate to me, cause my eyes had not yet adapted to the west, and It was terrifying at the same time, it was really intriguing. And now of course, Northern Nevada looks like a tropical rainforest to me, cause it's just all really lush sagebrush and junipers and Pines and things like that. A couple of years after that, uh, my girlfriend at the time was heading to law school and we were doing the tour of campuses and left the bay area, got to Mojave pretty late at night, stopped in a restaurant that's no longer there for dinner. It was. Amazingly picturesque even in the dead of night, woke up with a start because my girlfriend had fallen asleep at the wheel and then woken up after about a second and hit the brakes reflexively. And we piled out of the car. There were Joshua trees and saguaros growing together, and there was a coyote standing in the middle of the road, laughing at us, and it was just intoxicating. And I got propelled into it by some cursing and brake noise. And all of a sudden I was in this magical land. It was amazing to me. I just couldn't believe what was there. I mean, I knew that desert existed, but my introduction to the desert was just life altering. AP: I'm struck thinking about this listening. I've heard some of these stories before, but yeah, I grew up in the desert. San Diego doesn't look like it desert, but I knew from a very young age that we had planted a bunch of Palm trees and paved over what was Chap
