It’s great to be back! And by that, I mean back in Tucson (in time for the lovely fall weather) and back writing for The Voice of Tucson. I’ve been absent from The Logical Lizard, not through lack of affection, but because I have been working every single day since May of this year on Season Two of my television series Meteorite Men. And I thought the first season was hard work.

Last year we were given a tall order by Science Channel: produce six one-hour episodes in seven months. We weren’t quite sure how we’d manage but we did—barely. The final episode was delivered to the network just five days before its air date. Five of those episodes were filmed in the US, and one in Canada. It was exciting, challenging, occasionally dangerous, sometimes hysterically funny, and often exhausting.

Steve and Geoff on location filming "Meteorite Men," June 2010. Photo by Suzanne Morrison.

For Season Two we were given just five months to produce eight one-hour episodes, and five of those were to be filmed overseas. So, since late June, I have traveled more than 60,000 miles; walked on four continents; visited eight countries; seen ten states in the Union plus the District of Columbia; completed over twenty interviews for radio, print and social media; encountered extraordinary wildlife including camels, llamas, eagles, thousands of wild parrots, a lizard the size of a dog, kangaroos, emus, and a three-legged cat. Oh, and we got to guest star on American Chopper.

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As Douglas Adams noted in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “How ever fast the body travels, the soul travels at the speed of an Arcturan Mega-Camel.” In other words, while I was filming in the Arctic Circle, my overstimulated brain had not finished processing my adventures in the high Atacama Desert of Chile. While dozing in a tent in the Australian Outback, I had dreams that I was still exploring salt flats in the American West at 103 F, during a previous shoot. A couple of nights ago, I woke up in utter darkness at about 4:30 am (our call time on shoot days was typically 6 or 6:30 am) grabbed my alarm clock and thought to myself: “Which hotel am I in? What time is my flight!” before realizing that I was, in fact, at home in my own bed and there were no more flights. At least for this season.

The Meteorite Men on their Orange County Chopper. Season Two location shoot, June 2010. Photo by Suzanne Morrison.

Only one of our field team from Season One joined us for our 2010 “world tour,” and she—Senior Producer Sonya Gay Bourn—has always been the most indispensable member of the road crew. So, if we could keep just one of the original team, we wanted it to be her. During our first night on location for Season Two, we had a meet and greet with our new director, co-executive producer, director of photography, second camera, sound men, and camera tech. I raised my glass to Sonya and said: “If I found myself in the middle of the screaming wilderness during, say, the 19th Century, with thousands of ferocious warriors descending upon my position—weapons raised for attack—and could only have one person standing next to me, that person would be Sonya.” No disrespect to my stalwart co-host Steve Arnold, and I promise you, he feels the same way.

I have never met anyone like Sonya, and I am quite sure there is nobody in the world remotely like her. Brilliant, sassy, unconventional, striking, fearless, and resourceful, she is also an accomplished director, writer, and former stand-up comic. She also seems to know almost everyone on the planet, well, almost everyone worth knowing. Steve likes to joke that if we got into a serious jam—in the most desolate corner of the world—Sonya would know somebody at the local helicopter outfit and, with the aid of the sat phone and Blackberry from which she is never separated, would arrange an airlift for us in less than thirty minutes.

The Meteorite Men on the hunt. Atacama Desert location shoot, August 2010.

One of my favorite shows on television these days is Animal Planet’s Whale Wars—a gripping documentary series that chronicles the ecological group Sea Shepherd’s hair-raising attempts to curtail illegal Japanese commercial whaling. It’s one of the few programs that holds my attention from the first frame to the last. Those guys have nerves of steel and big eco hearts. Imagine my delight, therefore, when I discovered that two of the brightest lights in our 2010 crew were the cameramen from Whale Wars. We camped together for four nights in one of the most inaccessible parts of the Australian wilderness and they enthralled me—as we sat around the campfire—with harrowing tales of their adventures on board the Sea Shepherd vessels. Now that is a fireside chat.

Photo by Suzanne Morrison

Once I finally returned to my desert home one of my friends asked: “So was it fun? What did you see?”

I paused for a moment—jet lag trying to convince the parts of me traveling at the speed of an Arcturan Mega-Camel that I was still at least partly on the other side of the Earth—then replied: “Everything. I’ve seen everything.”

Meteorite Men Season Two premieres this coming Tuesday, November 2, on Science Channel and Science Channel HD. Air times here in Tucson are 6 pm with a repeat at 9 pm (Cox Digital); and 7 pm with a repeat at 10 pm (Comcast Digital).

In my professional life I travel to a lot of weird places looking for meteorites, fossils and other natural history treasures. More often that not, we are working in remote areas, far from civilization, and regularly encounter unusual plants, animals, and environments.

A typical expedition might involve two or three 4WD vehicles, enough food and water to keep a small group active and healthy for a couple of weeks, maybe an ATV or two, and other heavy gear such as large metal detectors and digging tools. On one hand I am thrilled by the opportunity to experience aspects of the natural world that city dwellers rarely, if ever, get to see. On the other hand, I am always somewhat concerned by the impact our convoy might have on delicate ecosystems.

Taking the high ground

Recently, we have been exploring a zone that would have been quick and easy to scout on ATVs, but we decided to work on foot instead. What might have taken only an afternoon on a motorized all-terrain vehicle took days to explore the old fashioned way: boots in the dirt. During the past few weks we have run across numerous beautiful (and protected) horned toads. cacti with new, brightly-colored buds; intriguing millipedes with their hundreds of tiny, perfectly aligned legs; rare flowers; hummingbirds, and many other small living things that would be crushed in an instant by the fat tires on a quad.

When things go wrong: Our vehicle stranded in the Atacama Desert

When driving off-road in trucks, we try to stay on existing trails as often as possible, and I frequently make an instantaneous detour to avoid flattening a plant or pummeling a flying insect. Campsites are typically set up in a natural clearing and my team is always meticulous about packing out all of our trash, except for the very few things that are naturally biodegradable and will, in fact, provide food for our temporary neighbors—apple cores and orange peels for example.

When it gets tricky: While filming a documentary for Discovery Channel we needed to tow a large metal detector through high wildflowers in Kansas. Birds sleep in the underbrush during the day, so we drove very slowly to give them plenty of time to get out of the way.

If we need a campfire we either bring wood with us, or gather dead branches from the ground. Using a small portable gasoline stove prevents us from having to burn any natural materials at the site. When we are excavating, we avoid damaging plants as much as possible, and always fill in our holes. Team members who smoke collect cigarette butts in an empty bottle, and we even make a point of picking up other people’s trash (if there is any out there in the wilds). We try to leave a site just a little cleaner than we found it.

Tiny footprints in the sand: During an expedition to Siberia we came across diminutive white birds who nested on the ground. They lived on an island in the middle of a frigid river with no likely predators. The little birds attacked us, fiercely, when we got too close to their nests, and we gave them a wide berth, not wanting to step on eggs or get pecked!

Some things are unavoidable: We burn gasoline in the trucks, and we need batteries and electricity to power our equipment. Food and water are consumed. Weeds are run over by vehicles. But we do our best to be considerate visitors. I make my living by working with the natural world, so it is my duty and pleasure to respect its integrity.