A Petroleum Pipeline Portal to Regeneration – and Home, with Christopher Brown

The RegenNarration Podcast

Christopher Brown is a celebrated science-fiction writer and decorated lawyer (and once co-hosted a punk rock radio show). His newest book, however, is described as a ‘genre-defying work of nature writing, literary nonfiction, and memoir that explores what happens when nature and the city intersect … [challenging] our assumptions of nature itself.’ It’s called A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys and other Wild Places.

The blurb of its publisher Timber Press, an imprint of Hachette, puts it like this:

'During the real estate crash of the late 2000s, Christopher Brown purchased an empty lot in an industrial section of Austin, Texas. The property—a brownfield site bisected with an abandoned petroleum pipeline and littered with concrete debris and landfill trash—was an unlikely site for a home. Along with his son, Brown had explored similar empty lots around Austin, “ruined” spaces once used for agriculture and industry awaiting their redevelopment as Austin became a 21st century boom town.

'He discovered them to be teeming with natural activity, and embarked on a twenty-year project to live in and document such spaces. There, in our most damaged landscapes, he witnessed the remarkable resilience of wild nature, learned how easy it is to bring back the wild in our own backyards, and discovered that, by working to heal the wounds we have made on the Earth, we can also heal ourselves. Beautifully written and philosophically hard-hitting, [it] offers a new lens on human disruption and nature, offering a sense of hope among the edgelands.'

As soon as I received this book, I immediately invited Chris onto the podcast. And to my delight, he and his family were happy to have us drop by. So while our wives worked and kids played, Chris and I explored what he’s called their ‘little house on the petroleum prairie’, and just how he navigated a serendipitous path, through personal and global travails, to a portal of healing, regeneration and more than a little magic.

Chapter markers & transcript.

Recorded 30 March 2025.

Title slide: Chris holds a tell-tale sign, in front of the house you can barely discern from all the lush greenery there now (pic: Anthony James).

See more photos on the episode web page, and for more behind the scenes, become a supporting listener below.

Music:

Silhouettes, by Muted (sourced from Artlist).

Regeneration, by Amelia Barden.

The RegenNarration playlist, music chosen by guests.

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Chapters

1. Entering the portal (00:00:00)

2. Meeting out front & retracing what Chris originally found (00:03:27)

3. From Petroleum Pipeline to Prairie Home (A view into deep time) (00:08:15)

4. It looked like a portal (arriving at the old petroleum pipeline) (00:14:55)

5. Building a House that Supplicates to Nature (00:17:40)

6. Glimmers of possibility (admist the GFC & Mad Max) (00:19:05)

7. Following an ancient migratory pathway (00:22:27)

8. The cleanest urban river in Texas (00:24:07)

9. Personal trauma unexpectedly led to all this (00:24:57)

10. Ancestral rewilding threads (00:28:27)

11. Creating an extraordinary ‘little house on the petroleum prairie’ (00:30:42)

12. Soundscape shifts while heading down to the river (00:37:00)

13. Serendipitously meeting Agustina & the Subi salesman tracker (00:39:00)

14. Experiments with how much rewilding comes into the house (00:42:27)

15. The moment Chris was first drawn to this place (00:44:30)

16. A part of the DDT story Rachel Carson wrote in the 60s (00:46:57)

17. The complication of a different climate on native plants (00:48:08)

18. Wary of an ongoing type of eugenics (00:49:20)

19. How to be with ongoing industrial development? (00:50:55)

20. UK laws for development to increase biodiversity (00:52:55)

21. Seeing the world through the prism of property (00:55:42)

22. Land that has accidentally returned to the commons in the fastest growing US city (00:57:12)

23. The ultimate shift and possibility (00:58:05)

24. Unexpectedly tuning into his late father after receiving his weather radio (01:01:16)

25. A shamanistic aspect available to all of us (01:06:20)

26. Healing land & self (01:09:55)

27. Music and a connection to the deep past (01:13:37)