A few years ago I started building a photo album I labeled “Patterns.” It soon grew to five hundred photos, making me realize that it’s not just the way I SEE nature it’s the way nature IS. I can hardly step outdoors without noticing patterns everywhere: ripples in a puddle, …
When I moved to Florida I thought it cute that yard birds were the live kind. Then, I realized they were in people’s yards because they had nowhere else to go. They’re forced to coexist with humans on chemically treated lawns, mulch, concrete and asphalt. Great egrets trek through my neighborhood …
Like a lover it calls me. I rush down the road to uncover its secrets. But it eludes me. I come away with bits and pieces: a cardinal air plant flashing red in the dim surroundings, newborn alligators, their eyes barely open, sliding by in the duckweed. The Fakahatchee Strand …
When Meta was small we spent time at a friend’s house on the Chesapeake Bay. Living on the water was a new experience but like most children, the ultimate observers, Meta soon pinned things down. She divided the year into “osprey season,” (in summer, they sat on mile markers in …
On the bridge over the river, a large crowd is pointing cell phones at an alligator mississippiensis. The grownups giggle like kids. Londoners standing next to me confide that Paris with its “Mona Lisa” pales in comparison to these prehistoric beasts at Myakka River State Park. Sometimes I think they’re …
