I have spent more than fifty-five years looking closely at the world around me.
It began when I was young, with a film camera, black-and-white photographs, and long days wandering through Florida swamps, bogs, woodlands, bay heads, fields, and along the edges of creeks and marshes. I was looking for birds and wildlife, but I was also watching everything else. I carried notebooks. I made observations. I waited.
Over the years, that curiosity carried me far beyond photography.
I’ve lived off-grid in a cabin in the woods without running water, spending my days writing, photographing, reading, and observing nature. I traveled from Florida to California and eventually back again to my home state of Florida. Wherever I lived, I kept watching.
Sometimes that meant sitting hidden behind brush at the water’s edge, hoping for a photograph. Sometimes it meant watching a red-shouldered hawk build a nest, seeing eagles meet in the air, or noticing the arrival and departure of migratory birds moving through Florida.
While I waited, I began wondering about everything around me.
Who had lived on this land before me? What had happened along this creek, road, marsh, or forgotten piece of ground? Why did a place have a certain name? Who were the people whose stories had disappeared from the usual histories?
Those questions led me into libraries, old books, historical records, genealogy files, newspapers, forgotten documents, and conversations with elders who remembered things that had never been written down.
All the while, my interest in nature remained with me.
I noticed the ferns and mosses beneath the trees. Tiny creatures moving through clear bay head creeks. The way plants returned to disturbed ground. The way birds altered their habits when the landscape around them changed. I watched places damaged by people slowly become something living again. Nature adapted when it could. Sometimes it could not.
Eventually I realized that nearly everything I write about began the same way my photography did.
By sitting still.
By watching.
By wondering.
By following one small question into another.
Today I write across several subjects and genres, from nature and Florida history to forgotten people, unusual stories, children’s books, mysteries, and whatever else manages to capture my curiosity.
Much of it begins with material I have gathered over a lifetime. File cabinets filled with notes. Old clippings. Research. Photographs. Names written on scraps of paper. Observations recorded years ago because something about them seemed worth remembering.
Now, one by one, I pull those files back out.
Sometimes they become an essay. Sometimes a photograph leads me somewhere unexpected. Sometimes a forgotten name becomes a story. Sometimes a handful of notes becomes an entire book.
This website is where I bring those things together.
It is a place for photographs, books, observations, old stories, natural history, forgotten history, and whatever I happen to be curious about next.
Welcome to my life of curiosity.