Poet and naturalist Charles Hood lives in the Mojave Desert. He recently released two books with Heyday: Wild Sonoma and A Salad Only the Devil Would Eat: The Joys of Ugly Nature. While working on this book, Charles passed the thousand-species mark on his world mammal list—an achievement that he says “ranks somewhere between being a local pickleball champion and accumulating the world’s largest ball of string.” Always ready for the next excursion, he owns three bat detectors, nine headlamps and flashlights, and a hard-copy world atlas, “since you never know when Siri will go wonky on you.”