I thought about doing Four Hundred Things on Friday and sharing a lot more photos, but that would just be cruel. So I edited myself. Below are a great white heron, a pair of alligators, an insanely huge grasshopper (if I had thought to put my pinky finger in for scale, the grasshopper would have been longer and twice as fat!), a lizard/anole type creature that was also quite big, and a wild honey bee hive.
© Loree Griffin Burns
© Gerry Burns
© Loree Griffin Burns
© Samuel Griffin Burns
© Loree Griffin Burns
It was nice to take this trip while my mind was between projects. I have a new book brewing, but the major research for that particular project won’t begin until February. And so I had the luxury of time to think and read and watch and wonder about anything at all while traveling. I wondered about all the creatures pictured above, each native to the Florida Everglades, but I found myself especially drawn to stories of non-native species: Burmese pythons and Brazilian pepper plants and the like. Now, back home, I find myself pulling books and articles that I’ve collected over the years and realizing that this is a topic that has interested me for quite a while … and not for the reasons one might think. And so I am reading and wrapping and researching and decorating all in equal measure. I love this part of my work, thinking and exploring without obligation, without deadlines, purely because a topic interests me.
Happy Friday!