Do you knock on wood?

Yes, on lightning struck wood, driftwood and sacred ironwood.

What is a species you feel is frequently misunderstood?  

Bats in the belfry. I’ve worked with threatened lesser long-nosed bats, who are great pollinators of tall cacti, agaves, and tree morning glories, and their roosting caves don’t get no respect. I’ve been thrilled to have thousands fly through my legs, under my outstretched arms, and brush the hairs in my ears as they emerge from rock crevices for their nocturnal journeys

In what environment do you feel most at home?

A remote hyper-arid desert coast where extremophiles — no, not extremists — flourish.

What is your favorite tree?

I’m bad at choosing between my loves; it’s like being asked which of your kids is your favorite. My favorite three trees in the world are the imperiled sacred Cedar of Lebanon, and its neighbor the Wild Pistachio known as Tree of Reconciliation, and the Honey Mesquite, one of which is known to my Indigenous Yaqui friends as The Talking Tree.

Nature would be betterwithout . . .

Us reducing it to thingness and rather reimagining it as interspecies interaction.

What is something you’re looking forward to?

When ALL of us become good allies to one another, to the poor and marginalized, in a multicultural and biodiverse world.

What was your last memorable animal encounter?

On the first day of spring, I saw a remarkably camouflaged Mojave Desert Chuckwalla who “disappeared” from view in its contemplative stance on a mottled granite boulder in the morning sun.

Do you have any unusual hobbies, hidden talents, or superpowers you’d like to share?

I have been blessed with an extraordinary sense of smell ever since an unruly mule bucked me off and smashed me into a boulder, diminishing my vision and cognitive abilities for months. What a gift to be kicked in the ass by an ass!

If you could, regardless of the local climate, reach out of your kitchen window a pluck a fruit from a tree, bush, or plant, what would it be?

The Sahara Pomegranate that my Syrian refugee ancestors carried from Damascus to Andalucia Spain when their empire fell. They obtained just one viable seed from that tree and began pomegranate cultivation first in Iberia, and then in America. It embodies a true taste of home.

If you could make pancakes with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?

Nancy Green, the formerly enslaved woman who role played Aunt Jemima from 1893 to 1923, and who deserves to have pancakes tenderly made for her rather than her offering them to others . . . if she still cares to eat them.

Would you jump at an opportunity to go into space? Why or why not?

I would jump at going into the space of a rainforest canopy, into the miniscule microbial nursery called a vinegar mother, or the benthic depths of the ocean. There are many undiscovered spaces among us. I am already extraterrestrial, so I want to become a better earthling, not an alien.

Who are some of your heroes or heroines, real or fictional?

John Fife and Jim Corbett of the Sanctuary Movement, Dolores Huerta of Untied Farmworkers of America, Jean Giono of Provence, and Rachel Carson of the sea and the bee, Rumi, Palestinian writer Mahmoud Darwish, and my poet friend Naomi Shihab Nye.

Who is a character from literature or film with whom you intensely identify?

The folk hero of ecological restoration Elzéard Bouffier in Giono’s The Man Who Planted Trees and Doc Ricketts in Cannery Row.

What is something new you’ve done recently?

I’ve begun to teach young men and women of Indigenous and Mexican ancestry in rehab or off parole how to grow their own food and medicines for their binational, multilingual community in the desert.

What’s the wildest thing you’ve witnessed or experienced in nature?

The green flash over the desert coast at sunset, and bioluminescence during a meteor shower, both in the Sea of Cortes, as well as having a Rufous hummingbird sip wine out of my mouth in Sitka, Alaska.

Are you optimistic about the future?

I am sure that both beautiful ecstatic moments and deep sorrowful suffering will continue into the future, and I am willing to accept the Divine Prescence in both. Maybe you can’t be open to one without experiencing the other.

What is a smell that makes you stop in your tracks?

The smell of citrus blossoms wafting around a desert oasis in early spring, or of za’atar spice mix on Lebanese manouche bread.

Do you have a writing/art-making routine?

I start a story or poem in a trance just as I go to bed, carry it with me in the night, and it either reveals itself in written notes of poems I find at dawn at my bedside, or wakes me up in a fevered ecstasy that I must respond to with pen in hand.

Which of your book’s subjects or characters haunts you the most

The marginalized characters in my book Against the American Grain, who changed America not from the East or West but from the Desert South — Estevanico el Moro, Juan de Banderas, Teresita de Cabora, Joaquin Murrieta, Dolores Huerta, Lalo Guerrero, Coyote Iguana, and others. They changed American from its poorest most desolate and disadvantaged margins.

When you enter a bookstore, where do you head first?

To the bathroom, since I’ve usually driven from fifty miles away! Then either the poetry or the poultry sections, depending on how rural the bookstore happens to be.

What is a book that you loved reading recently?

Manchán Magan’s Thirty-Two Words for Field: Lost Words of the Irish Landscape, Wedding of the Foxes by Katherine Larson, and Ecologies of Ecstasy by Simone Kotva.

Where did you grow up?

In the Indiana Dunes on Lake Michigan where I played hooky before dropping out of high school, then on interracial crews of Gandy dancers in railroad yards, which taught me the life and death options of being a team player.

Are you the same person you were as a child?

I’m still that twelve-year-old boy playing hooky in a seventy-four-year-old man’s body.

What song or album reminds you of high school?

Try a Little Tenderness by Otis Redding live on the Stax Revue in Paris, What a Day for a Daydream by John Sebastian and The Lovin’ Spoonful, and the Staple Singers’ I’ll Take You There. (I saw the last two on the same stage when I was fifteen.)

What did an average Friday night look like for you as a teenager?

I was asleep by eight p.m. waiting to wake up and run on the beach at five in the morning, then swim the breakers. Friday night? I never saw one.

If authors had walk-up songs like professional baseball players do, what would yours be?

Heigh-Ho, Heigh-Ho, It’s Off to Work We Go.

If you could live anywhere, where would it be?

Where I am. As Wendell Berry said: “I stand for what I stand on.”

What would you like to be most remembered for?

Speaking from the heart to others’ needs, suffering heartbreak while doing so, and recovering from trauma with irreverent humor.

What flower would you want pinned to your breast after you die?

One of those clown’s flowers that squirts water onto passersbys!

If you could come back as any organism, who or what would you be?

A desert horned lizard. (I believe I already am one that was reincarnated.)

Read more about Gary and his soulful activism in Water in the Desert.