I am a retired Psychological Associate, a writer, and someone with a serious interest in the natural world and how we relate to that world. 

In my first five years, I was plunged into nature in Corpus Christi bay and the beach at Padre Island. There were lightning whelks and blue crabs, as I remember. Then we moved to Oklahoma City, where my recollection of nature is limited, unfortunately, to a surprise encounter with a tarantula. I do recall that I had a big interest in dinosaurs by the time we moved to Colorado. And during the time we lived around Denver, there was camping in the mountains and a pivotal event – the day the girl across the street invited me “snake hunting” and we caught a garter snake.

We moved to Fort Worth, and my parents took me to the museum, another pivotal event. At the “Natural History Club,” a small group of us was involved in caring for the live animal room, adding to the scientific collection, and going on field trips with mentors. My interest in reptiles expanded to fish, mammals, birds, ecology, and conservation. At the threshold of my teenage years, I became a nature kid.

Somehow, in college, I decided to pursue psychology. I don’t regret that odd twist in my path. I was licensed as a Psychological Associate in 1985. My career in psychology included counseling, child development and attachment relationships, as well as behavior analysis. I provided mental health services in an early childhood intervention program and I did neuropsychological testing in a pediatric hospital, and then retired during the Covid pandemic.

Especially during the later years of my psychology career, I teamed up with Steve Campbell to start the Dallas-Fort Worth Herpetological Society and spent a lot of time out in the field in various parts of Texas and then writing about those adventures.

My retirement opened up time and opportunities for more writing. That includes my books and also the articles I have written for Green Source Texas, a digital publication covering nature, conservation, energy and climate change, and other topics.

I am interested in issues such as mindfulness, stress, reducing fear of aspects of nature (such as snakes), attitudes toward nature and conservation, and our adaptation and coping with climate change and loss of wild places.

Strengthening our connection with nature is very important to me, and I continue to provide nature education and lead occasional walks and mindfulness activities in nearby wetlands, woods and prairies. I have close ties with Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve and Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge.

Much of what I have done is motivated by a concern for how we have become disconnected from nature and how many places have been lost. My presentations and writing are my attempts to share knowledge, wonder, and the sense that we are interdependent and that we must protect nature. My psychology training informed my interest in how humans interact with nature and how that relationship with the natural world works.

Please feel free to contact me using the “Contact” page.

My Books

My traveling around Texas with Clint King, looking for herps (reptiles and amphibians), led to the book, Herping Texas, co-authored with Clint. After its publication, I started writing The Wild Lives of Reptiles and Amphibians. The idea for that book was to support older kids who liked reptiles, the kind of kid I had been when I showed up at the Fort Worth Children’s Museum at age 11. However, it works well as an introduction for adults, in that I tried not to talk down to children, just write in a straightforward and accessible way. It introduces readers to the natural history of reptiles and amphibians by telling the stories of various kinds of herps in the United States. Within those stories, readers learn how they hunt, move, defend themselves, find mates, and adapt to the places in which they live. There are chapters about how to get out in the field and look for them and how to stay safe. Conservation issues are discussed, too.

As I became more interested in sitting quietly beside a stream or walking through a forest or prairie, I talked with my friend, naturalist and photographer Meghan Cassidy, about a book that would describe traveling all over Texas and practicing mindfulness. Luckily, she agreed, and we began working on Mindfulness in Texas Nature. The book outlines how the practice of mindfulness helps us step away from our internal distractions and experience nature in the here-and-now.

The early chapters, “Restoring a Connection with Nature,” introduce mindfulness and how it is practiced and then describe some of the incredible diversity of nature in Texas, from the high plains in the panhandle to the coastal prairies and beaches along the coast. That part of the book is a sort of toolbox for planning visits to places in nature and getting the most out of them once we have arrived. Destinations do not have to be big or remote; there are also wonderful opportunities for mindfulness and nature study in small parks or greenspaces close to home.

The second half of the book, “In the Field, Through the Seasons,” describes our travels together to the Big Thicket National Preserve, LBJ National Grasslands, Big Bend National Park, the Nature Conservancy’s Clymer Meadow preserve, and other parks and preserves in the state.  Each of those narratives includes descriptions of mindful experiences as well as observations of wildlife and natural history.  Meghan’s photos capture both the broad landscapes and intimate portraits of plants and animals. 

Meghan is a photographer and naturalist with a particular interest in spiders and other invertebrates (see the Flycatcher’s Web site). While I am the author, the book was a partnership between Meghan and me, both in the field and back home as we considered how to tell these stories in text and photos. You can buy prints of Meghan’s photos, including many from the book, at her Darkroom site.