Newsletter – 1/2026

Friends, colleagues, countryfolk, I have rifled through 20 years of emails, blog subscriptions, and contacts. I found you. Now you are on another list. While I’m patting myself on the back for doing something I’ve meant to do for many years, you are perhaps rushing straight to the unsubscribe link. Carry on, I understand.

BUT, If you stay subscribed, here’s what to expect: You will hear from me a few times a year about photography, writing, audio and other creative endeavors I’ve been working on–from the First Mate’s Log podcast and book; to the US-Mexico Border and Anacostia River in Washington DC; to who knows where else. You will also find some glowing referrals for musicians I love, books that changed me, awe-inspiring natural-world factoids, and other miscellanea. Plus a few favorite photos from my files.

The point to all of this, if one exists, is seeking out connection within the human community, and building bridges to the vastness of the world beyond our human borders. I hope you’ll stick around, and I’d love to hear back from you in this space where social media algorithms have no power.

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NewWORK

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FIRST MATE’s LOG — Serial Podcast and Limited Edition Book

This past fall I launched a project that has been in the slow works for 5-plus years. The First Mate’s LOG is distilled from 10 years of journaling about the dream of a sailing circumnavigation, and the decidedly different actuality of a sailing adventure. I’m recounting this story in serial format, day-by-day, as it was experienced from the years 2020 to 2023. The story will unspool in the form of a serial podcast and serial book. The full first season of the podcast, and first installment of the book—both titled Thermometer Rising—have recently made their way into the world.

PODCAST–Launched in August 2025, the First Mate’s Log podcast is a goodly account of an adventure begun in March 2020, a month that will live in infamy as the dawn of the pandemic age. Chapter 1, Thermometer Rising recounts (from my limited perspective as a person desperately trying to get on a sailboat), the months that followed the arrival of Covid 19.

Here’s a clip of the podcast intro:

You can listen to the first full season on Patreon, where you can also become a podcast supporter and get bonus photos, videos, and extended versions of the podcast. You can also listen on Spotify. If you do listen on Spotify, please take a moment to rate the show, it really helps!

Season 2 of the podcast–with the working title Pringles for Poseidon–will launch in early 2026. 

BOOK–The First Mate’s Log book is a new endeavor for me as a writer. My other four books were made and distributed by publishers. I had little control over how they were made or what they looked like or how they were shipped. I’ve decided to stop grumbling (as of one minute from now) about publishers printing books as cheaply as possible in China, and taxing the forests of the world to put my words and thoughts on a piece of paper (and collect 90% of the proceeds). I will instead make this book myself.

Almost all aspects of The First Mate’s Log will be hand-ish-crafted, with the help of a family-owned Philadelphia printer, who will use more ecologically sensitive materials on the printing side. I’ll also be distributing the book using 100 percent recycled and recyclable packaging materials. I will only be printing 100 copies of this limited edition book.

The First Mate’s LOG: Thermometer Rising is on sale now on my website–until all copies have been spoken for. Those who purchase the first installment, Thermometer Rising, will have first dibs on the next installment when it is published later this year. I anticipate writing and producing 10 to 12 book installments in the coming years. All together they will comprise a ponderous limited-edition maritime tome, The First Mate’s Log. 

STORY SUMMARY: At heart, the First Mate’s Log is a tale of two flawed dreamers who have always wanted to sail around the world. It’s a story about ordinary time, and extraordinary time; about courage, fear, frailty, adventure and love. It’s a story of real life, and the life of an imperfect mind, inside a little boat, sailing upon a big, big ocean.

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BORDERLANDS

My work documenting the wildlife and ecosystems of the US-Mexico border continues. Over the past year I have been working on a project in the San Rafael Valley of Arizona, one of the most ecologically important areas in the country, where border wall construction began last summer, 2025. In the coming months I’ll be releasing a new project about the San Rafael, and the jaguars, mountain lions, endangered orchids and desert aquifers at the mercy of capricious and indifferent political winds. Stay tuned, more on this in my Spring newsletter.

ANACOSTIA RIVER

I’ve been working a long, slow burn on the Anacostia Project. It’s quietly exciting. I don’t have anything to report at the moment, except that the project concerns soil, seeds and memory. More in the year to come.

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Miscellanea

Have you noticed, even now in the darkest days of winter, many plants wear hundreds of tiny buds on their bare brown arms. Each bud is a tightly compressed package of plans for some future beauty, and fodder for the bees. I first noticed this on a spice bush, but then my eyes were opened to other plants, similarly sitting quietly, poised for the first sign of a spring they know beyond all doubt will one day come. Now that is faith. I wonder, do we all have a similar capacity, do we all house unnoticed buds that await the warming of soil and the gathering of light?

I recently read Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. It’s a slim volume, just a collection of Rilke’s correspondence with a young man in the early years of the last century. I found the whole book filled with sage offerings apropos for any seeker, but these words have stuck with me especially:

“How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” –Rilke

That is all folks. Until next time…be well, and be on the lookout for princesses disguised as dragons. They are everywhere my friends, everywhere.