I love the marshes and sounds of southeastern North Carolina where I grew up; the mangrove channels and sawgrass prairies of south Florida where I live now; and the volcanic landscapes of the Big Island of Hawaii, introduced to me by my brother. 

I love the people, markets and landscapes of Nigeria where I lived for a year, and also of Ghana, Kenya, Botswana, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Zimbabwe and South Africa where I have spent shorter periods of time. 

I enjoy travel by land and (especially) by sea, and I love my own backyard where I garden with Florida native plants, invite birds and butterflies. 

I am happy paddling my canoe, either with companions or alone, long distances that take me into wilderness where I sometimes stay for days, even (when I’m lucky) weeks.

                  And I write.

I write about the Everglades, a world that feels like home to me.  I write about the Big Island, what it has taught me of subterranean forces.  I write about Nigeria, my troubled and beloved Calabar. 

I have been a teacher, researcher, editor – always at the intersections of art and inquiry, always with the heartbeat of the natural world in my ear. 

My academic life led to Arts-Based Research and specifically Poetic Inquiry.  My work as a naturalist  has increasingly merged with concerns about art, poetry, teaching and research.  I have learned that if we look deeply, pay attention, everything is connected to everything else.  Like my marine biologist mother, I have become, though differently, an ecologist.