After being a loyal Leelanau Conservancy supporter for about twenty years, I took the next step and became a docent in 2023. I’m an avid birder and road cyclist, and I consider Leelanau County one of the best places in the country for both. Like the birds, I’m a seasonal migrant myself, coming up from Atlanta to Northport around the first of May and staying into December—the perfect period for going on Conservancy hikes and seeing the seasonal changes in the Leelanau landscape.
During my academic career I was a professor of pre-Civil War history and American environmental history at Georgia Tech, the author of, among other works, John James Audubon: The Nature of the American Woodsman (2017). More recently, I served as consultant to the Name Change Task Force of the National Audubon Society, in 2021, and I’m now a member of the History Committee of the American Ornithological Society. But those are indoor activities; I much prefer being outside.
