S4E27: Episode 100 | Poetry and Plants with Cameron Mayer

UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT

0:00:00 - (Chris Clarke): 90 miles from the desert Protection Podcast is made possible by listeners just like you. If you want to help us out, you can go to 90 miles from needles.com donate or text needles to 53555

0:00:25 - (Joe Geoffrey): think the deserts are barren wastelands? Think again. It’s time for 90 miles from needles the Desert Protection Podcast.

0:00:46 - (Chris Clarke): Thank you Joe and welcome to this hundredth episode of 90 Miles from Needles the Desert Protection Podcast. I, as always, am your host, Chris Clarke and we recorded a lot of really wonderful things on the evening of Thursday, August 7th. So much great work from half a dozen wonderful activists, journalists and writers. And because we have so much good content, we are breaking this episode up into six pieces rather than have an hour and 45-minute episode. We're considering all of this the hundredth episode in our hearts, but we are numbering them as distinct episodes to make the podcast distributors happy.

0:01:21 - (Chris Clarke): So don't be too confused. Some of them will be a little shorter than usual, others will be a little bit longer. I am just pleased as hell with what people brought to the table last night. And this chapter features Cameron Mayer of Friends of the Amargosa Basin reading some of his absolutely wonderful poetry. I think you'll enjoy it.

0:01:40 - (Chris Clarke): Let's move on to Cameron Mayer. Cameron's a desert enthusiast, writer and resident of Shoshone, California.

0:01:48 - (Chris Clarke): Very few people can claim that distinction.

0:01:50 - (Chris Clarke): Cameron discovered the Mojave in the fall of 2017 on a class field trip while attending Cal State Long beach and has been spellbound ever since. Two of us met a few years back when he reached out to me as part of his work on a master's thesis on Western Joshua Tree conservation debate in the Morongo Basin. He now works as Program Director for Friends of the Amargosa Basin, which has a long-term goal of establishing a new national monument to provide increased protection for that unique watershed.

0:02:19 - (Chris Clarke): We have pretty good Amargosa representation here tonight. So Cameron, thank you for joining us. What you got for us to listen to?

0:02:27 - (Cameron Mayer): Thanks Chris. I've been following this podcast since the very beginning, so it's surreal to be here on the hundredth episode and gosh, it feels like it's been a long time. It. It's feel like it's gotten me through the highs and lows of moving to the desert and being in the role that I'm in. But also it feels like it came really fast and you've done a lot of good work. So kudos. I live in Shoshone, California. I like to choke that I'm one of the 10 of us that's here. And usually if there's anyone else in the room or at the same meeting, we constitute a majority of the town.

0:03:03 - (Cameron Mayer): But anyways, I have a couple of poems from recently published book and I was hoping maybe to read a short passage from some new work I've been working on. The poems are one's on Honey Mesquite and one's on Mojave Aster. It's from a book I wrote entitled Wildflowers of Shoshone and Tecopa: An intuitive guide. And it's, it's sort of a melding of a little bit of Botany, a little bit of photography. I like to take shots of the desert and capture all the little things that make it beautiful, as well as landscapes and all that good stuff. And I also like writing poetry and sort of bringing all that together.

0:03:45 - (Cameron Mayer): A Little bit of botany is not only a desert enthusiast, but a plant enthusiast. So I published that this past spring. If you want to buy it from a non-billionaire bookstore, it's locally at the Shoshone Museum and across the street and possibly in Tecopa again I think we ran out there. But I'll start with Honey Mesquite because it's the most prescient at the time. I just harvested some actually a couple weeks ago. They're dropping from the trees as we speak.

0:04:16 - (Cameron Mayer): Oh, the life giver, sustainer of cultures more than human alike. Ground boiled, raw indulgence. This is the way to plenty in a year, sometimes none over generations. Stories told in the hard baked earth. Taproots, finding, connecting, nourishing. All that will come, multiple skills all in turn. This plant does it all. Shading, sheltering, soothing. A one stop shop for the road ahead. The endless summer turn to prosperity.

0:04:58 - (Cameron Mayer): I really just wanted to capture just the multifaceted relationship that all of us have with this special plant. Humans and non-humans alike, or more than humans. And it's just a really wonderfully abundant desert native that we appreciate in the time of year that it's really hard to appreciate the desert sometimes with the relentless heat. So this next one is on Mojave Aster, a very special plant. To me you can almost not even know it's there until all of a sudden it explodes into very light, almost translucent lavender blooms, usually on the side of a highway or a rocky ledge or crevice.

0:05:40 - (Cameron Mayer): And I think for me it always symbolizes searching for something and encountering a sign of that thing or that I'm on the right track. Essentially roadside rock side, any side of a valley, of a river. Of crushed mantle to make an ideal crevice for lavender and gold. At center, ragged leaves sprouting true from last year's form. Among tannin bronze, the evidence of ancient seas, aster marks the defining path towards a higher meaning, purpose instilled in a gaze.

0:06:22 - (Cameron Mayer): The journey continues for what is desired until it is time to move on to the next chapter, the next bunch of aster. We had a very prolific bloom of those out in Chicago Valley, and thankfully I've been able to keep the one in the yard alive too. This next one is a very short passage. In addition to writing about my home in Shoshone in the area and Amargosa Basin, that's really impactful to me. I also like to write about areas in the Southwest and namely Nevada.

0:07:03 - (Cameron Mayer): I've always felt in the past seven, eight years I've been journeying out there, that it's a home away from home. And in addition to this area, it could often be overlooked, undervalued, and simply no one knows that there's anything out there that's worthwhile. It's crazy that it's just so under the radar, so to speak. And all the treasures there are just not as appreciated as they could be. And so this short passage came out of a camping trip to the Pahranagat Valley, about an hour and a half north of Vegas.

0:07:38 - (Cameron Mayer): For those of you who know the Great Basin, Highway 93, it goes all the way to Idaho. It's wonderful. And I stayed at Pahranagat at the Upper Lake Campground in January, which is a unique time to be there. I will tell you, trying to tank camp in 13-degree weather really does build character. Maybe, but anyways, it's an experience. So. This is entitled Prana Get Lost and it's part of a collection I'm calling the Great Basin Collection.

0:08:12 - (Cameron Mayer): If it were ever necessary for me to become lost, this is where someone would find me. Not just in Alamo, but lakeside at Upper Pahranagat, chatting up a stately Joshua tree of Lincoln County, Nevada. Only a picnic under cottonwoods blessed with spring vigor will do. The days would melt away all by themselves. After such an occasion of supreme sensibility. A seat next to a furious campfire is ideal in January.

0:08:47 - (Cameron Mayer): I wonder how this bountiful desert comes alive in the heat of summer. Yes, I could get lost here, forgetting burdensome pain, traveling the basins and ranges with no clear method for healing. This geography of violence instills peace in its predictable patterns, its prolonged and meticulous crafting of arid landscapes. This valley makes a simple existence desirable with a notion that comes on fast yet originated long ago and under the depth of life lived and dreams dreamed, the world could just go by at its own clever pace Here in the land gifted the savory scents of sagebrush.

0:09:35 - (Cameron Mayer): Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Chris.

0:09:37 - (Chris Clarke): Absolutely lovely.   Cameron, thank you so much for joining us.

0:09:40 - (Chris Clarke): I finally got you on the podcast. That's awesome.  And that's it for this chapter of our 100th episode. Thanks to everyone who's contributed to this, namely Mason Voehl, Morgan Sjogren, Cameron Mayer, David Morales, Ruben Martinez, and Ruth Nolan. Thanks as well to our voiceover guy, Joe Geoffrey, and our podcast artist, Martin Mancha. Our Nature Sounds recordist, Fred Bell will be showing up in our 101st episode. I know I said that he would be showing up in our hundredth episode and I was mistaken. I apologize to Fred and to you.

0:10:17 - (Chris Clarke): Don't forget we only made it to 100 episodes because people supported what we're doing. If you like what we're doing and you want us to keep doing it, you can go to 90 miles from needles.com donate if you'd like to get us to Tucson and El Paso at the end of September to spread the word. That's 90 miles from needles.com elpaso thanks for listening. And here's to the next hundred episodes. Bye now.

0:10:44 - (Joe Geoffrey):  90 Miles from Needles is a production of the Desert Advocacy Media Network.