A brief description of what we'll be doing with the podcast, partly to answer questions and partly to get practice with our equipment. All flaws and glitches included for transparency's sake.

Transcript (Chris C. speaking):

I'm in a low pass in the Bigelow Cholla Garden Wilderness. The Bigelow Cholla Garden sounds like a place only a fool would visit. The Bigelow Cholla Garden is a garden in the same sense that the Devil's Playground is a playground. But I'm looking out over the panorama to the Southeast that includes the Stepladder Mountains, the Turtle Mountains, the Chemehuevi Mountains, the Whipples in the far distance; aside from the breeze, just... quiet.

[music intro]

About 15 years ago when I had a blog. Do you remember blogs? I remember blogs. About 15 years ago on my blog, I asked readers what we were fighting for. It turned out to be a difficult question to answer. Back in 2005 or so we all knew what we were fighting against. Bush was in the white house. The US military was involved in two land wars that we knew of.

There were increasing infringements on civil rights. There were plenty of things that we were fighting against. And one day I just realized that I didn't know what we were fighting for. So I asked that question on my blog and readers had a lot of answers but every answer that said "we are fighting for X" was essentially fighting against something.

"We are fighting for an end to the war." "We are fighting to stop attacks on women's rights, on civil rights." There were a few people that suggested it was a rather privileged question that we have so many things to fight against that thinking about what we're fighting for, thinking about the kind of society and the kind of world we want to build is a privilege and a luxury. 

And honestly, I found it a little hard to argue with that. But still, I thought if we don't have in mind the kind of world we want, we're not going to do as good a job of fighting against the things we don't want. 

Since I moved to the desert, since I became involved in protecting the desert, that question no longer bothers me. I know what I'm fighting for. The Southwestern deserts in north America are the largest stretch of ecologically functional habitat left in north America, south of the tundra.

They are a wealth of biological diversity. They possess some of the oldest living things on the planet. There are plants living in the desert that are self-aware. Every time we look at the desert, we find new species. 

And from a cultural political point of view, the native cultures that grew here in the desert that we settlers and descendants of settlers get our best to displace are still intact, still have an intact relationship with land, still have that cultural connection to the mountains, the washes, the springs. The landscape is a living thing. It has integrity. It has an importance that has little to do with human beings though not nothing. It's a landscape in which we are not the most important species, but despite what some would have you think we do belong here in a way. 

But less tangibly than all of those things, the desert is a place where one can find renewal, both in the desert and in one's self. The desert is a place where you can see the ecological processes going on in deceptive simplicity. And by understanding a bit more, noticing a bit more, you can feel a bit more connected. The desert is a place where you can go and feel unimportant, and yet huge. 

There are many things worth fighting for in this world. The desert is what I'm fighting for. And the people that call it home.

By putting together the podcast 90 Miles from Needles, what I want to do is bring that desert to you. The sounds, the experienc

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