Naturalist Charles Hood lives in the Mojave Desert near Los Angeles. He is a poet, essayist, photographer, and field guide author, as well a Professor Emeritus and the proud caretaker of two dogs, two kayaks, and two mountain bikes. Retired from full-time teaching, he serves on the Board for the Friends of the Antelope Valley Indian Museum.

Charles grew up near the Los Angeles River, though he has also lived in Arizona, Maryland, Utah, London, and Papua New Guinea. He has been a ski instructor, a factory worker, a bird guide in Africa, a Fulbright Scholar, and an Artist-in-Residence with the National Science Foundation in Antarctica. He also has done work with the Center for Art + Environment in Reno, Playa Arts in Oregon, and with the Center for Land Use Interpretation at their field station in Wendover, Utah.

A self-described “addict of ecosystems,” he has studied nature in all fifty states. In travels abroad he has ended up in deserts and mountains from Mongolia to the Amazon and from Tibet to the South Pole. Along the way he has seen 6,000 species of birds in the wild and 1,000 kinds of mammal. The author of 20 books, he has won awards for both poetry and prose, and his co-authored book Wild LA was named a Best Nonfiction Book of 2019 by the California Independent Booksellers Association. A Salad Only the Devil Would Eat was praised in the Los Angeles Times and won the Editor’s Choice Prize from Foreword magazine; Jane Goodall wrote the foreword to Wild Sonoma. His books often feature his own photography; as of 2024, he has published over 800 images and been in forty group or solo art shows.

Charles says that he has never seen roadkill he didn’t want to pull over and examine, nor a “road closed” sign that didn’t make him scratch his head and wonder, “What’s just on the other side of that locked gate?” Despite those urges, he says he tries his very best not to get cited for trespassing, speeding, or overstaying the camping limits in national parks.