My own background and interest really stem from curiosity about nature and the plants and animals that I encounter there. I love being outdoors and grew up fishing, gardening, and exploring the rural landscape.
I became a biologist because such a career allowed me to learn more about nature, and I became a teacher because teaching allows me to share that love with others. It has been a fun ride so far!
My first book, Mountain Nature, was an expression of both my love of nature and of teaching. I worked to learn about local plants and animals, to photograph them, and to figure out more about their lives. I learned a lot while writing that book, and I shared it with my students. They are the reason I constructed it the way I did—with seasonal chapters that described the most common and charismatic creatures. I’d take my students outdoors and we’d see flowers blooming and insects visiting them, we’d hear different birds singing in different habitats, and they’d ask why one generation of monarch butterflies migrated while others didn’t. I wanted one book I could use on a field trip or in preparation for an outdoor excursion, and that is Mountain Nature.
But in addition to being a “Mountain Person,” I’m an “Ocean Person” too. Among my favorite childhood memories are walking along a beach looking for shells and shark teeth. My husband and I have enjoyed sailing along the coast of the southeast. We loved the freedom that sailing gave us to explore, and the way an ocean-going sailboat provides everything needed to live aboard for weeks at a time (or even longer if you are truly organized). So my second book, Waterways, is the story of learning to sail, the natural habitats we explored, the animals we encountered, and the way we developed our philosophy of nature. Waterways is still a book that explores nature, but also considers human nature and our relationship to the world.
The Legend of Skyco came about while I worked on Waterways. As I looked into the change of animals and plants along the coast, I realized that I needed to learn about the change in people along the coast, too. I grew up in the Pee Dee region, sailed along the Neuse River, explored Pamlico Sound, and it finally dawned on me that all these names came from the people who lived there. As I drove back and forth from the mountains to the sea, I wondered what it would have looked like 500 years ago—none of the wide highways or vast farmfields or crowded cities. Instead, there were people living locally-- relying on their knowledge of local natural resources for millennia. And I was reminded of my grandfather. My family is a close-knit group of farmers from the hamlet called Chapin, SC in the Dutch Fork. They’ve lived there for generations, and my grandfather could identify every tree on his farm. But what if our family had lived there for thousands of years? Just imagine what they would know. That is what I wondered.
So that is where Skyco came from. He was a real boy and was kidnapped by the first English explorers, but the scientist in the group, Thomas Harriot, befriended Skyco and it is likely he returned back to his home when the English left. This book is about the world that Skyco lived in before the English arrived.