Happy Holidays – and a Letter

December 21, 2024 / Michael Smith / Leave a comment

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday, however you celebrate it. We’ll be sticking close, avoiding traffic, and getting together with family. I’ve recently been walking at Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve and Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge (FWNCR), and wrote a “Letter to Nature Kids” (See December, 2024 End of Autumn) about those walks and some of the birds and other wonders I saw.

If you can, I hope you can take a walk that is as wonderful as mine yesterday at FWNCR. “It was a day at the edge of winter, getting late in the afternoon. A crow’s call echoed through the woods and a few dragonflies flew low around the edge of the grasslands. Other than that, this place felt like it could be sleeping – still, quiet and peaceful. We all need to sit quietly in a place like that sometimes, don’t we?”

Nature Community as a Strategy for 2025

December 15, 2024 / Michael Smith / 2 Comments

Sitting in a preserve writing in my notebook, I wondered about the point of “all this wandering and writing, taking small groups out to learn about or experience nature. While much of the world is falling apart, I hold myself to an expectation of doing something.” What actions are needed? What might contribute something worthwhile? What can I do, and what should I do? How can we work together to sustain the good in society and in nature?

The goals of the incoming administration appear to be to instill fear and division, seek out loyalty and punish perceived enemies, dismantle the rule of law (and the assumption that it applies equally to all) and consolidate unrestrained power and wealth. The plan is evidently to take a wrecking ball to anything in the government and society that interferes with achieving those goals, and collateral damage is perfectly fine.

With that context, what good is finding places in nature for immersion in prairies, woodlands, water, “brother sun and sister moon,” other than an escape? Can my response to our troubles be to keep on living a relatively privileged life, looking for beauty and a connection to creation, keeping my distance from the losses taking place around me? If we want to have meaningful lives that reflect our values, this is certainly a time for self-examination.

We need each other

As individuals we figure out who we are and what we will do, but much of what we can do is in the context of partnerships, teams, and groups. One strategy for the coming years should be to take care of those connections with others. They keep us sane and healthy, and they help us accomplish things.

It was once easier to be more connected to other people, sustaining real face-to-face relationships as part of neighborhoods or networks of friends. Some of the social institutions were deeply flawed, but one way or another we kept getting together with each other. Increasingly, we spend our time in the bubbles that surround our smart phones, and social institutions are being supplanted by social media.

The importance of actually being present with each other is hard to ignore. So much of human connection and communication involves responding to each other’s posture, facial expression, voice volume and inflection, the flow and timing of our words and bodies. It is intricate, marvelous, and much of it happens out of our awareness. And not much of it can happen in the lines of a text message or Facebook post. You can look at some of the research and professional opinions here and here.

We are more powerless when we are isolated and mistrustful

When is the last time you were in a group of people with a common purpose or intention? Maybe it was a small gathering, or perhaps it was a big group, either listening to each other, celebrating, or something else. There may have been some sense of coming together as one, perhaps a feeling of the group being more than just the sum of the parts. There is an important Surgeon General report on the need for social connection and the epidemic of loneliness we are experiencing that is worth reading, even for us introverts. Our society is ever more fragmented and isolated, leading to real risks for our physical and mental health.

And so I think that taking care of our connections with other humans is as important as the care we give to our connection with the rest of nature. It is together with each other that we have the best shot at defending our favorite woodland, our friends, marginalized neighbors, and a society in which justice and empathy can still be found. When we cannot be together physically, I’m grateful for tools like Zoom and FaceTime that allow the next best thing.

And we need to pay attention to important teachers. Among the first people I think of is Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and professor as well as a member of the Potawatomi Nation. Her new book, The Serviceberry, revisits and extends her thoughts about how relationships work in nature and how that is a useful model for humans. Serviceberries, corn, trout, cedar waxwings – living things in nature provide their gifts and receive benefits in return. Relationships are reciprocal, and, as she writes, “all flourishing is mutual.”

In The Serviceberry, she compares capitalism based on exploitation and scarcity with the gift economy that is prevalent in nature and in some indigenous societies and small communities. “I share what I have with you, and there will come a time when you share with me.” In such ways are relationships of trust and care built, and we all can flourish. It’s a good way of being human, and good business, too. Kimmerer talks about Native American communities in which prestige is based on giving gifts to community members, rather than hoarding wealth.

It is challenging – but important – to be an advocate for and an example of generosity, gratitude, and reciprocity. I’m willing to bet that those qualities, applied to ourselves and our social and natural communities, are the best way forward. Kimmerer teaches us that in nature the energy that drives the system comes from the sun, warming everything, driving the weather, and powering the photosynthesis through which plants make food. She suggests that love is the analogous source of energy that empowers human interactions and communities.

So if there is a reason to be less isolated, this is it. The contribution that I can offer is mostly to try, as I wrote on that day in the preserve, to “bring people more into a relationship with nature,” and hopefully “strengthen a sense of belonging or a sense of being part of a community of life. Perhaps less self-focused, less likely to use the world rapaciously, maybe. We need ways of being less acquisitive, more a part of something.” Maybe there is more; my self-examination is not over, but here is what I know best.

I want to participate in a community of people attuned to each other and to nature. I think such a community would pay attention to the lessons Kimmerer describes. It would seek ways to live that are not centered on power, dominance, and wealth. I think that’s essential to trying to defend democracy and a just society, along with protecting the natural world that makes such things possible.

RIP, Tex

December 11, 2024 / Michael Smith / 2 Comments

Nearly ten years ago, I was given a young Texas garter snake. A landowner in North Texas had picked him up on his land (where he reported seeing that subspecies regularly) and wanted verification of which kind he was seeing. I drove there with a friend and was delighted to hear that this farm seemed to be one of those little pockets where the Texas garter snake was doing OK. They have always been pretty hard to find, but some places are better than others. Texas Parks & Wildlife Department considers them to be “critically imperiled.”

I accepted this young one because it evidently would not be a noteworthy loss for that local population, and because he could be an ambassador for threatened Texas snakes. I’ve taken him to quite a few talks and presentations to new groups of Master Naturalists and to school or summer camp groups. Seeing Tex was a good way for people to learn how being a striped snake helps you escape by giving the appearance of being stationary – the stripe doesn’t seem to move – while you are slipping away. And of course he was a living example of an animal I said was in serious trouble and might disappear, for reasons that no one is sure about. It could involve things like habitat loss, habitats fragmented by roads, fire ants, and maybe other things.

In a study in the 2019 issue of Southwestern Naturalist, researchers looked at the genetic status of The Texas garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis annectens) and two other related garter snakes that occur in Texas. They also looked at suitable habitat, finding that in Texas, where T. s. annectens does better than the other subspecies is in the area of the Cross Timbers, parts of the Blackland Prairie, and some of the Post Oak Savannah and down toward the coast. The study did not look at why it is imperiled.

I wrote about one of the times I took Tex to meet some kids at River Legacy Nature Center, when a girl had commented that she hoped one day they would be protected. On days like that I felt like Tex living in captivity (rather than living out his life on that farm) was worth it. Tex, of course, was silent on the matter.

But he was happy to nap under a piece of bark, cruise around the cage and eat the occasional mouse. His siblings and cousins in the wild were probably snacking on small frogs and earthworms, but most garter snakes can be convinced to eat thawed mice from the store. He grew and seemed to thrive, and living about ten years is not bad for a garter snake. (Their life span in the wild is assumed to be less than that, and sometimes in captivity they may live longer than ten years, but the evidence about their longevity is fairly spotty.)

And now he has died, I presume from something akin to “old age.” RIP, Tex. You charmed a lot of kids; a lot of Master Naturalists around here know your kind based on getting a look at you. I’ll miss you.

Wear Your Love…

December 6, 2024 / Michael Smith / 2 Comments

I sat beside the pond, looking at the line of trees outlined by a pure blue sky. The glossy green blackjack oak leaves were turning a mixture of caramel and ruddy red. In front of the trees was a stand of little bluestem, a native grass with subtle beauty. Each starts with a little clump of narrow, curled leaves at ground level, sending several tall stems to reach chest high. The tiny seeds along those stems are feathery, and in autumn sunlight they are like a constellation of stars scattered among the grasses. Altogether a lovely little spot on a fine late autumn day.

You might say that this preserve has been kissed by creation, filled with a beauty that it wears in one form or another throughout the seasons. Before long I was thinking of “Wear Your Love Like Heaven,” a song by Donovan Leitch that most of us – of a certain age – have some memory of.

When it was released in 1967 I heard the song many times, but never listened to it well. I assumed it was a hippie love song (“kiss me once more”), the opening of the double album “A Gift From a Flower to a Garden.” But Donovan, with his soft Scottish voice, is often deeper than that. It is more like a prayer than a love song.

The verses suggest an artist with a beautiful palette of colors, or someone experiencing such a range of hues in nature. “Color in sky Prussian blue,” but the colors change with sunset as the “crimson ball sinks from view.” There are shifts to “rose carmethene” and “alizarin crimson.” It is easy to imagine being in a place where the land and sky overwhelm one with beauty, where any of us might ask for more such experiences of awe. Such a plea could easily be a prayer:

“Lord, kiss me once more
Fill me with song
Allah, kiss me once more
That I may, that I may
Wear my love like heaven”

What might it mean to wear your love like heaven? I suppose wearing it would be to let it show, not hide it, and offer it freely to anyone. And a state of bliss and love freely shared with everyone is one way to imagine heaven.

Within such a state, Donovan experiences an extraordinary vision:

“Cannot believe what I see
All I have wished for will be
All our race proud and free”

Perhaps he is seeing what follows from wearing our love like heaven. Generous and open-hearted, not trapped in greed or the desire for domination, free of self-destructive impulses and all the things that bind and restrict us. Wearing a transcendental love would make us proud and free.

It was a beautiful vision to carry with me as I walked through oak woodlands and on trails along patches of prairie that are lovingly being restored. Some of the blackjack oak leaves have taken on a shade of alizarin crimson, and tonight, if the sky is clear enough, we might look up to see Prussian blue.

To connect with and be blessed by the divine, filled with song, and to live in beauty and love. That’s a lot of message to be carried by a two-and-a-half minute pop song from 1967, but we are allowed our interpretations of the meaning of art and this is how I hear it. The song has been covered over the years by people I think of as serious artists. Ritchie Havens recorded it in 1969 and Sarah McLachlan covered it in her 1991 album, “Solace.”

More Thinking About (And Photos From) FW Nature Center

December 1, 2024 / Michael Smith / 2 Comments

I’ve walked trails and sat on benches at the Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge (FWNCR) a couple of times in the last week or so and cannot get it out of my mind. I’m happy to let the marsh, the woodlands, prairies, and bottomland forests take up space in my brain. It’s the worries on their behalf that I’d like to shake off.

I recently wrote about the FWNCR and its 3,650 acres where a substantial bit of North Texas wildness lives on. Green Source DFW had just published my article about discussions between the City of Fort Worth, the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT), and the Friends of Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge about the future of the nature center. BRIT now manages the Botanic Gardens and is now eyeing the nature center.

The City of Fort Worth website quotes BRIT CEO Patrick Newman saying, “The biodiversity crisis is affecting plants that are our food and possible cures for diseases. As we try to identify these plants, we want to link arms with the Nature Center and continue their great work as we move towards and create this possible partnership.” Does this mean BRIT wants to study the biodiversity crisis? Medicinal plants? Wouldn’t the easiest thing, the thing that would call for them to “link arms,” be to work together with the nature center through a research partnership? Without either one taking over the other, that is.

But the stated goals for the nature center, again quoting the city website, are, “increasing attendance and use of the center, membership, educational programs, and private support for research, conservation and investment.” One of the three issues being considered is, “Economic benefits for the City and BRIT.” In my Green Source article, I noted that the city’s Mark McDaniel said the plan was for attracting more visitors, ramping up marketing, and enabling more facilities and capital improvements.

You can see how I might worry about whether the nature center and refuge would stay wild. It’s not that we shouldn’t let more people know about FWNCR and invite them to visit. As I said a month ago, “We want everyone to share the refuge, learn from it, and fall in love with it. But not everyone all at once, and not by offering so many built attractions that people miss the point, which is the wildness.”

*A pocket prairie along the Deer Mouse trail*

Please do not let this issue be buried in all the other news that we are preoccupied with. Let the City of Fort Worth Park & Recreation Department know what you think. Speak up for the nature center.

The gallery of photos below is from my recent visits to FWNCR. If you click the photo you can see it full-size.

*Prairie below the Hardwicke visitor center*

In the Chisos Mountains, 9/17/21

November 29, 2024 / Michael Smith / Leave a comment

“Life will wear you down,” I said.

Did I mean that life was a destructive force, an enemy to be resisted? Is it our fate to fight and ultimately lose? Life cannot be an enemy, because what would be left if we defeated it?

“Time will wear you down,” was my revised thought.

Things change. To be present on earth is to see gravity, erosion, and the cycles of seasons take their toll. It is to experience developmental growth but also decline, the arrival of every good thing that comes to our doorstep and, eventually, its departure.

“Life will change you,” I decided. “It will raise you up from the ground and clothe you in fragrant woodlands, but sometimes strip you bare. The rains will soften your features, or give them a newly grooved and wrinkled expression. Birds will sing in your hair, and then the music ends until a new season renews the song.” Always a new season is arriving.

(A fragment from my notebook in September of 2021 when Meghan and I were in the Big Bend working on the mindfulness book.)

What Will We Do Now?

November 25, 2024 / Michael Smith / 1 Comment

I write about nature, about the experience of nature and the cost of losing our connection to it. What could I have to say about this new world we are about to step into and what we can do about it? This space is about “our lives” in nature, and those lives – really all lives in nature – will change with the incoming administration.

Our country and the world is enduring a time of breaking, of desecration, when the worst impulses of many people are enabled and encouraged. And yet, there are a lot of us who know better, were raised to be better, and maybe we can lessen the damage. We have to try. We’re allowed to grieve the better world that is postponed or maybe lost, but our love for this world and for each other calls us out to do what we can.

The first thing we can do is to support ourselves and each other. Think about what the airlines say to do first if the cabin loses oxygen: grab the mask and make sure you have the oxygen that will let you function to rescue your child or your neighbor. We can do no good if we spiral into despair or exhaustion.

We cannot support each other if we’re isolated, and we need to work on this. Our Surgeon General called loneliness a public health epidemic, and a poll from the American Psychiatric Association said that 10% of Americans report being lonely every day. An NPR report stated that, across two decades, young people aged 15-24 now had 70% less social interaction with friends. As communities, we are often fragmented and isolated, and that might be a significant factor in our sense that we are falling apart. We increasingly keep to ourselves, and sometimes that results in thinking which becomes rather paranoid, and we become less patient, understanding, and skillful when dealing with fellow humans. The phone becomes our social partner and our way of interacting with the world, but social media is no substitute for face-to-face communication. And I say that as an introvert who hates parties and large social events. Find people with whom you can really talk as well as listen. Don’t forget their importance.

Nature, of course, can play a role in our self-care. In times to come we have to remember how the woods can be a refuge and wetlands can help wash away anxiety, trauma, and anger. Just as we need connection with allies, friends, and relatives, we need connection with trees, prairies, wetlands, and wildlife.

Such places will be more threatened than ever. The incoming administration has pledged to “drill, baby, drill,” and is also interested in selling off federal land to developers for housing. Project 2025, which (despite early denials) seems to be the blueprint for the incoming administration, intends to dismantle much of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), reverse what it considered the Biden administration’s “climate fanaticism,” forbid any scientific investigations by the EPA that are not explicitly authorized by Congress, and undo any progress toward clean energy. We know that climate scientists have said that much damage has already been done and we see the fires, floods, droughts, and hurricanes all over the news. Every year without significant climate progress will result in worse damage. How bad and how soon is hard to predict, but after the election, things look much less hopeful.

The new administration wants to convert civil service positions into political appointees. People working in civil service mostly have the independence and professional expertise needed to guide the implementation of environmental (and other) regulations. You can call them “bureaucrats,” but we probably want independent professionals helping determine the safety of our water or what sort of protection is needed to save a species from extinction. That may work out better than promoting opportunists willing to say anything to show their loyalty.

There are other threats, of course, like the stated intention of rounding up millions of our neighbors and deporting them, of giving up on real equality and justice, and marginalizing and harming our LGBTQ+ friends and loved ones. All this is interconnected. A government that treats some of its citizens with contempt will treat the land with comparable contempt.

We are going to need to try to stay informed about these things and know how to speak up. Perhaps we can choose an organization or two that we trust and channel some of our support and our advocacy through them. Perhaps it’s the Center for Biological Diversity, Earthjustice, or 350.org. Or it might be some other organization.

Here in Texas, the old-fashioned way of writing to elected representatives now seems a little … quaint. They do not represent us and are willing to harm us to get what they want. The head of Project 2025 wants a right-wing revolution which will be bloodless only “if the left allows it to be,” presumably meaning that they use violence if we don’t go along with what they want. The incoming President wants to be able to use the military against the “enemy within.” Significant portions of our own government are aligned with this view of us as the enemy (or are subservient to those who do). Somehow “please, sir, would you consider voting for this” does not seem like it will be effective with such people.

That is not to say we should not write to, say, Ted Cruz or Dan Crenshaw so that they know what their constituents think and maybe feel some pressure that might restrain them. We might share such letters publicly, in social media or a letter to the editor that says, “here’s what I wrote to Senator Cruz.” Normalize resistance, and let others know they are not alone.

But there is something else. How has it happened that more of our population shifted to the right? How have Proud Boys, bullies, and fascists become OK? How do Christians come to disavow Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount as “too weak” and embrace hatred and exclusion? What drives the love of violence and responding to disagreement or differences with bullying? How did so many of us (very often men) define their personal adequacy by their ability to humiliate or harm others?

I hope that we can be examples of a different way. We can be models of empathy, respect, and a recognition that how others are doing is important to our own well being. I hope we teach our children, and particularly our boys, that we can be both strong and gentle, and we should always look for non-violent ways to protect what we love. These things should not be confused with weakness and passivity. Sometimes physical strength is needed, but the most important strength is moral strength and the courage to stand up for principles without being a bully. Too many of us, particularly boys, have not seen examples of this or have watched those around them treat such qualities with contempt. That needs to change.

Don’t let the ugliness blind you to the beauty that is also around us. Take time for that beauty; let it in.

Before the Storm

November 4, 2024 / Michael Smith / Leave a comment

On Monday morning, November 4th I felt the uncertainty of the storms that were on the horizon. How soon, and how severe would they be? But that was the future, and beyond my doing anything about. A good alternative was to be in the present, and also in the presence of trees, soil, and other living things. What could be as trustworthy and reassuring as nature? There are some people in my life like that, and they are essential. There are also places like that, and I’m grateful for them.

*Oak leaves covering the trail – the oaks are dropping leaves without showing much autumn color*

So, with storms still to the west, I took a walk at Sheri Capehart Nature Preserve. It was cloudy, with low cumulus clouds racing to the north and the occasional glimpse of blue sky between them. A couple of black vultures were overhead, careening back and forth in the wind with acrobatic turns and adjustments of flight feathers. From my camp stool near the bluff, it was 75.3F, continuing the above-average warmth that is becoming our new normal.

*The “official” autumn colors: crimson and orange, yellow and green*

At 9:20am I sat near the top of “Kennedale Mountain,” that hill that overlooks the lowland through which Village Creek drains. From the sandstone escarpment you can glimpse downtown Fort Worth through the oak branches, if you want to. I’d rather keep in the company of the blackjack oaks and sandstone, watching clouds or butterflies. Away from the bluff, on the back side of the hill is a place a bit more protected from traffic noise, where fewer visitors walk, and so it is a favorite with me.

*A place a little quieter, maybe a little wilder than other locations*

As I sat, a crow flew past, cawing loudly, and clouds continued streaming to the north. The wind moved through the trees, and when stronger pulses of air came through the sound was like a rushing river. Downslope toward the east I heard a northern cardinal and a Carolina wren.

Some of us need natural sounds like these, and relief from the unremitting mechanical noises that so often mask them. The noises of human activity are certainly present at the preserve, as it is located a little south of the third-busiest airport in the world and sits right beside major highway construction. But some days, when we let go of the noise and focus on birds, breeze moving the trees, or the occasional frog calls, we get a little of the peace that natural sounds bring.

*A tracing of green in the crimson leaves of a ragged sumac*

By 9:50am, back over on the bluff, the clouds seemed thicker and the sky a little darker. Here and there I noticed the pattern of fallen leaves on the ground; the variation in color and shape and things like acorns or moss always pull me in. It is art on a tiny scale, for those who are pulled toward such things.

The storms held off until after I left at 10:13am, and we can hope that they bring only the rain we need. A little thunder is always good – one of those natural sounds I like so much. Just under two hours at the preserve had brought some of the peace and wonder that are part of that place.

Preserving the FW Nature Center and Refuge

November 2, 2024 / Michael Smith / 1 Comment

I’ve lived in North Texas for a long time, and the Nature Center and I go back many years. In the opening pages of Mindfulness in Texas Nature, the very first words are, “I went home on Christmas Eve 2019 to the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge.” I meant that those prairies and woodlands have shared so many days with me over the years that it feels like home. And so, sitting on a bench there on Christmas Eve was like visiting an old friend.

And the very first words in Herping Texas (published 2018) bring back a memory of surveying the reptiles and amphibians there: “Toward the end of March a few years back, a group of us took a walk through a bottomland forest at the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge.” I described the group of us walking through that forest and one member of the group accidentally discovering a rat snake making its way down the tree trunk where she was about to lean.

In recent years I have written about the place many times for the online publication Green Source DFW. As a reporter I’ve covered the re-building of the marsh boardwalk, the bison deck overlooking bison pastures, the recognition of some of its woodland as an old growth forest, the statue honoring the work of the Civilian Conservation Corps on refuge property, and the re-introduction of prairie dogs there.

Now the City of Fort Worth is considering handing over the management of the Nature Center to the Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT). The city would still own it, but BRIT would be in charge of some – or all – of its management and direction. I wrote about the issue in an article for Green Source DFW, which I hope you will read – “Should BRIT Take Over the Fort Worth Nature Center?“

The Fort Worth Nature Center & Refuge (FWNCR) has been managed by a series of dedicated, smart, and creative individuals. At its inception it had the guidance of my friend Rick Pratt, and in later years there have been people like Wayne Clark, Suzanne Tuttle, Rob Denkhaus, and now Acting Manager Jared Wood. Those are big boots to fill, and I hope that any management changes leave such people in charge. They are people whose first commitment is to the integrity of the refuge as a relatively wild remnant of the Cross Timbers and prairies that were here before White settlers.

As I see it, the FWNCR connects us to the wildlife, woods, and prairies that are like our extended family. That family includes the trees and other plants that give us oxygen, pull carbon dioxide out of the air and sink it into the soil, the wetlands that filter our water, the insects that pollinate our crops. The land, water, and all the living things provide a spark of wonder that adds joy to our lives.

*A swallowtail at the edge of the lotus marsh*

When we walk through the preserve, we become part of the land for a little bit, sharing a kinship with the rest of nature. We might even come to see our separation from nature as an illusion that we create, while the woods and prairies are the authentic reality.

What does the future hold? Can that authentic reality of the refuge hold its own against the urge to build more and more attractions, drawing in so many paying customers that the wildness is gone? We want everyone to share the refuge, learn from it, and fall in love with it. But not everyone all at once, and not by offering so many built attractions that people miss the point, which is the wildness.

I hope you will read my story at Green Source DFW and keep track of plans for what direction the city will take with FWNCR. Please step up and offer comments when the time comes, if you feel that your input is needed (and input from those who love nature is always needed!).

Talking About Mindfulness on The Texas Green Report

October 16, 2024 / Michael Smith / Leave a comment

Last month I was on the Memnosyne Institute’s Texas Green Report talking with Marshall Hinsley about Mindfulness in Texas Nature, the book I wrote with Meghan Cassidy’s photographs. I hope you’ll click on the Texas Green Report link and listen to the podcast episode.

Meghan and I traveled all over the state, experiencing places like Pedernales Falls or the Chisos Mountains. The book describes what the experience was like from a mindfulness perspective and offers lots of photos of places and wildlife.

As I mentioned in the podcast (quoting from the book’s introduction), it is about ways to be fully present when visiting those places, freed from the distractions and restlessness that can let the sights, sounds, smells, and other sensations slip past us before we really notice.

Additionally, I discussed the book with Christine Brown (of Texas A&M University Press) on her PBS show, “The Bookmark.” The show aired in August but you can watch it by clicking the link above.

The podcast and the TV interview each gave me an opportunity to answer questions about why such a book was needed and what Meghan and I hoped to accomplish with it. But really the only way to get to know it is by reading it while immersed in Meghan’s wonderful photos.