In Part One of my conversation with Jennifer Bristol, we talked about her journey into nature and the work she's done helping other people, especially children and families, find their own way outdoors.

In Part Two, we turn toward another important part of Jen's life: writing.

Jen has written two books about birding in Texas, and I've had the pleasure of watching that journey unfold firsthand. I even had one of my photographs published in her first book, something I'm still pretty proud of.

We talk about how years of birding, exploring, collecting stories, and discovering interesting places eventually become book ideas... and what it takes to turn those ideas into something others can enjoy.

One thing I've always appreciated about Jen is her ability to find something interesting in places the rest of us might overlook. A parking lot, a roadside stop, a neighborhood park. You don't have to travel to some spectacular wilderness to find birds, discover something new, or have a meaningful experience with nature.

Our conversation also turns toward Wild Women, a project celebrating the contributions of women whose stories deserve to be told, and the importance of storytelling in Texas conservation. We talk about how sharing experiences and perspectives can help people understand the natural world, connect with the places around them, and perhaps even inspire them to get involved.

And we finish with an invitation to do just that, to get outside, follow your curiosity, and begin developing your own relationship with the natural world.

This is Part Two of my conversation with my friend Jennifer Bristol. It's about books, birding, creativity, conservation, and what happens when the things we've discovered become stories worth sharing.

In this conversation

01:39 — From habitat discoveries to writing a book

19:56 — Wild Women: Ordinary people, extraordinary contributions

22:52 — Storytelling, Texas conservation, and inspiring action

39:06 — An invitation to become a naturalist this week

About Modern Texas Naturalist

Modern Texas Naturalist is a podcast about curiosity, the natural world, and the people whose lives have been shaped by exploring, understanding, and caring for it.

Hosted by wildlife biologist and conservationist Romey Swanson

Edited by Dell Little.

New conversations every other Wednesday.

Welcome to the Modern Texas Naturalist.

I'm Romey Swanson.

Pull up a chair and join me in conversations with people who spend their lives exploring, understanding, and caring for the natural world, who might just inspire the rest of us to look a little closer.

Let's see what we can discover together.

Welcome back to my conversation with Jennifer Bristol.

In part one, we talked about Jen's path through conservation, birding, and helping people, especially kids and families, find their own connections to the natural world.

But Jen has found another way to invite people outside, too.

She writes about it.

Jen is the author of several books, exploring birding and nature in Texas.

And I've had the good fortune of watching part of that journey up close.

She even gave one of my photographs its first appearance in a book, something I'm still pretty dang proud of.

But what interests me most isn't simply how someone writes a book about nature.

It's what happens when years of exploring, observing, taking notes, finding places, and accumulating stories finally become something you feel compelled to share.

So in part two, our conversation turns towards writing books, creativity, the places we choose to explore, and what it means to invite someone else to see a familiar landscape differently.

Here's the rest of my conversation with my friend, Jennifer Bristol.

Well, you mentioned great habitat that you've discovered or where people could discover wonderful opportunities to observe birds in general.

And if I remember right, there's a book about that written by a person named you, that was your first book project.

Singularly authored book project.

Yeah, it was my first.

I. I wrote a novel.

You wrote a novel, but it's not published.

You don't see it there in the pile.

Okay, no, I wrote it.

It's terrible, but I wrote it.

And so before we move on, do you dust it off and tweak on it a little bit?

I still really like it.

I like it.

Yeah.

But would anybody else.

I have no idea.

But whatever.

You know how you can figure out the answer to that question.

I know.

Okay.

So, yeah, let's.

Let's.

I love.

One of the things that, like, I've always had an appeal to you about is that you did this.

You said, I'm going to take my experiences, I'm going to take my passions, and I'm going to merge them into some projects.

And I think they just match you as an individual so well, because you have the parking lot birding, you have cemetery birding, and you've got other projects I'm sure you're working on in the future.

But what.

What I see from them Is that they take birding, which can feel complicated, and it can inherently feel like it has barriers to it, and you're, like, acknowledged.

But also, here's really wonderful ways to overcome that through very comfortable places and scenarios.

And I'm projecting a little bit of what I.

What I believe.

And then I want you to add all the corrections and all the color.

But, like, that, to me, seems like a person, like, completely in your seat.

Their motivation to write a book and then your will and determination to do it, which is another thing I admire because, you know, how many people talk about I'm going to write a book.

How many people open up a word processing spreadsheet and actually take that first step, but still never completed.

Yeah, you not only completed it, you've got multiple volumes.

And I'm hearing rumors that there might be more books coming into the future.

Tell us, like, how did this happen?

Because this is what I admire about someone that is a doer, Doer.

Doer.

And like, writing is a crazy process, and it's scary, and it's a whole new world.

It is a crazy process.

And, yeah, I mean, I think the world is full of people that would love to be a writer and that probably should be a writer, but time, money, competing interests, all those things, you know, sometimes kneecap people on that one.

So for me, I was already thinking about the writing process, so to kind of bring everything sort of back full circle.

We were actually on the great Texas birding classic, and we were going from Corpus down to the Rio Grande Valley, and we'd just been.

I can't even remember where.

We just walked all these trails.

And then we got back to the parking lot.

All the birds that we wanted to see were right there.

And so that started becoming a running joke, which was, oh, we must be getting back to the parking lot, because we're seeing more birds.

And I in no way shape or form advocate for parking lots at all, because there's more of them or more impervious cover in the world.

But it's just in those spaces where you can peer into the habitat that sometimes makes it easier.

Right.

Or that, you know, the campus of a nature center or bird blind or those sort of staged places that you will really.

It became quite our joke on the birding Classic.

But as we're driving, it was one of the few times that I wasn't driving.

I was in the backseat.

I started writing notes down, you know, had my little journal, and I wrote down the words parking lot birding.

And I was like, hey, what do Y' all think about this idea.

It's my mom and my husband in the car, and we just kind of started ping ponging ideas around and stuff.

And I wrote down basically what I wanted the book to be.

What was the outline?

You know, kind of visualized it being in these, representing the different regions.

And then there would be great places to go within each one of those regions.

Let me know if you start seeing a theme here.

And then I would help people understand where to go when they got there.

What are they gonna see in different seasons?

What birds?

10 To 20 birds should they be looking for when they get there?

And then invite them to go just a little bit beyond the parking lot to maybe the bird blind or the hawk watch tower, or is there a little nature trail that they could get to?

EAS and so when I said all these things are sort of happening simultaneously.

Let me let him finish out there.

Sure.

They're all happening simultaneously because I'm thinking really deeply about how do we help people understand what to do when they get to a park?

And so every project that I've ever started, I go for a very long walk and ask myself, what's the purpose?

And when I got back from the Texas Birding Classic, I went for a very long walk with the dogs and I said, what would my purpose of writing this book be?

And the answer was immediately clear to me.

This is your answer to helping people understand what to do when they get to a park.

Give them a target, make it easy.

There's nothing hard about what it is, you know.

And so that was my answer.

And I said, okay, I'm gonna get started on it.

You know, I'd already been to a lot of the locations because, you know, I was working for textual nature.

I was traveling the state all the time.

And then I reached out to friends and colleagues and was like, you know, what do you like in this region?

Where should I go?

I reached out to you, remember, and you had a great suggestion.

It's one of my favorite places to go birding still, you know, So I was just pulling.

Where should I tell people to go again?

That was easy to get around and easy to find the birds once they got there.

I didn't want it to be like, okay, I'm here, but there's no birds, you know, and then it ends.

Each location ends with a feather pact.

It's a picture of a bird.

So it gives you a bird to help identify that you might see there.

And then just a paragraph worth of the habitat that bird likes.

When is it in Texas, some sort of little fun fact that you can dazzle your friends with.

Again, I just want to keep everything very easy and doable.

Yeah.

And that was the purpose and I.

Love it because the way you wrote that book, it's got these different geographies of the state.

And so even your sub audience, you know, you're in the Valley.

Well, we're not just talking about Austin parking lots or north Texas parking lot.

Like there's places for everybody that should be somewhat accessible.

And I think when I was prepping for our conversation today, one of the things that I noticed and you kind of point out is you took your work as an interpretive ranger at Bastrop and how you.

You did that because you wanted to help folks connect to these places and the outdoors.

You obviously took the next steps in that in your career being an author and writing these particular types of books.

It's a through line from that and it allows you to kind of hit a bigger scale.

I mean, it's a lot of work to write a book, but once the book's written and in print, it will have the opportunity to hit many, many people ongoing in kind of a passive way.

And your scale of opportunity, it increases.

And I couldn't help but think whether she knew she was doing that or whether that was part of the intention.

There is a direct connection to her personal mission in these books and in this one and then the next one.

Oh, for sure.

And the other thing I wanted to point out before we leave this particular book is whether you know it or not, this was the first time I got to feel really special because in addition to consulting with you about some of the places in West Texas and I'm watching you right now and you have your gage hat on and I know the Gage Gardens is one of those places that I think you still like going to.

And the general area we all really enjoy.

But that was the first photograph that I ever had published in a book was what was included in your parking lot birdsworth.

It was a black cap vireo.

And so you made me feel really special while you were also doing your really great work.

And me at the time, I was just like, I got a picture and a book and you're doing this really like wonderful mission based project.

But beyond that, you going through your process.

The other thing I've always admired about you is that you've been so generous with your time and experiences.

To me, as I'm thinking about following you down this path and I have my own projects and Ideas.

And you've offered that mentorship to me and I'm assuming many others very openly.

And I think it's this return on investment that you are giving to folks.

Because I'm reading here.

You got Nancy Heron, you've got Rebecca Bens, who you've identified as mentors.

And I know that that's not a complete list.

Oh, not even close.

Yeah.

So you're big into acknowledging the mentorship that you've received and giving back mentorship to folks that are gonna make meaningful contributions.

I love hearing that.

Do you still have a mentor that you're learning from?

I mean, Parking Lot Birds is not old news.

It's still relatively new.

But you're multiple books into your journey now.

Yeah.

Boy, that's a great question.

Do I still have a mentor?

Not really.

It's kind of transitioned.

It's people that inspire me.

Yeah.

And mentorship can be passive as much as it is active.

That's another thing I've learned.

It's not like a rigid.

We're gonna create a system, and we're gonna follow up, check ins monthly.

Right, right.

You can be mentored simply by seeing somebody's example.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

I mean, it's.

I think that I'm definitely at a stage in life and in my career where it's those people that inspire me, you know?

I mean, even though, you know, you say that I inspire you, when I have that conversation with you, and I'm like, hey, what?

You know, are you writing, you know, or, you know, romy, what are you up to?

In case you haven't noticed, there is also a little bit of competitive spirit in me.

And I don't want to call it competition, but it's like, I do feed off people's energy of.

Oh, okay, they're doing that.

Ooh, that's interesting.

Well, how.

What should I be doing in that?

Should I be doing something like that?

Hmm, let me think about that for a minute.

And that charges me up, you know, So I like to place myself around those kind of people that are still energy charged and doing things and, you know, and then I kind of need to, like, take that information and then come back to my lair with it and start thinking about how I'm going to piece that together.

When I was working on Wild Women for good, I mean, it was like a deep dive into being around all these incredible women, you know, and their stories and the power of their stories and their journey and learning about them, not just in the interviews, but also then doing all the research that really energized me.

Even mentoring someone, again, it's not a rigid kind of thing when I'm talking to people that are younger and up and coming.

Yeah, I think that's fantastic.

I love it.

Well, I know that I'm certainly appreciative of it, and it is a model that seems to work really well.

A lot of the folks that I talk to that have come up, especially the conservation space, the wildlife management space, all the ones that I admire are ones that they know they were being mentored.

And that's the other thing, is that they, in return now give to younger folks.

And it's not always young folks in the sense of age, but young folks in the sense of where they are in their journey.

I've also mentored people that were older than me.

That said, you know, I've lived my life.

I was a business owner, an entrepreneur, But I really want to lean into the conservation space.

And they're making a jump.

I don't want to gloss over cemetery birding.

I want to acknowledge that we can bury it.

Okay.

All righty.

But it follows the theme of parking lot birds.

It's about accessibility.

It's about finding extraordinary opportunities in ordinary places.

You don't think about going into a cemetery and having wonderful habitat and wonderful observation, natural history observation opportunities.

Right?

Exactly.

Yeah.

We don't think anymore.

We used to about cemeteries as being parks, but they were the first parks in the United States and especially here in Texas.

But they are amazing little ecological wonderlands in many ways, especially the older cemeteries, again, following on theme.

They're easy to get around.

They're easy to see the birds when you're there.

And if the birding's not too great, there's other really cool things to look at at the same time.

Right.

When I was out doing the research for that, which I will say I loved doing the research for that book, but I was looking for that sort of nexus, if you will, between habitat and history, you know, to sort of bring those two things together, to sort of weave the story of Texas together through these different communities and through birding in our natural history as well.

So I loved, loved, loved, loved, you know, doing that research.

Cemetery birding gave you an opportunity to marry the natural history, bird observation with cultural history and place based history through the cemeteries and who was buried there, what occurred there.

And I'm starting, I think, to see that as a little bit of a niche that you're bringing into your writing, is that you're merging these things that some people may be Interested in history.

Some people may be interested in birds, some people may be interested in traveling.

Yeah.

And you're kind of bringing all of that into.

We can get here and do this thing, but you have all these other opportunities.

Yeah, exactly.

And I try to do it in a way that's light.

It's a light touch.

And then.

Starting point.

It's a starting point.

And if they want to go find out more information, then they can go down.

There's books for that.

There's a lot of books for that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But it's sort of like, hey, you should be aware of this, whether we're talking about the cemeteries or, you know, even in parking lot birding.

I'll take, for example, Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge.

There is so much history in that place.

I mean, the birding is off the charts.

I mean, the parking lot itself has an ebird list.

I mean, it's that good.

Just you just not leave that area.

So it's like, you know, how far back, how deep do you want to go?

Or you can just sort of skim along the surface and have just a little bit of knowledge, you know, I love it.

And I also think that for at least some folks, you would probably agree with me that if you positively impact one person, you've done a great job.

Well, one relationship may benefit from this, and that relationship is a fanatical birder and their sob.

The spouse of birder.

The spouse of birder is not a fanatical birder, but maybe they care about history.

Yeah.

And now they have a way of joining their spouse while they're birding and still have genuine interest because they read your book and, like, I like the history part and I'll tag along on the birding part.

Yeah.

And the wife or the husband, whoever's the major birder, is like, I can go out and do my thing.

And like.

Yeah.

And we.

But we're doing it together now because I do sometimes see married birder who are birding by themselves.

And, you know, that's probably an arrangement, works just fine.

And some people probably prefer it.

But some people, like, I know that I love when my wife goes birding with me.

I may be a little more intense than her, but she's better than me, you know, and, well, we could just period that better than me.

When I found ways to do things that make sure that I wasn't, like, all in on just birding, but we incorporated these other things.

Like, we'll do birding, burgers and beer.

Yeah.

And so I can get a friend to go with me to go birding for a morning on some trails, as long as we're going to go to lunch and have a beer and a burger somewhere cool afterwards.

And it's like this idea of marrying all the things so that everybody gets something and we're.

And we're doing it together.

I think that's another one of those maybe unintended benefits of your books is it gives that opportunity.

And I'm sure someone somewhere out there has benefited in that.

Oh, for sure.

I mean, I've actually met a couple, especially with cemetery birding, that he.

The husband, loved cemeteries.

She loved birding.

And they checked the book out at a library.

And I met them in Corpus Christi at Rose Hill Cemetery.

I was showing them the birds.

They were in the wrong place.

I was like, come over here.

Come over here.

Because there was all these warblers.

There was kind of like a hot zone is what I call it.

Birds were in the hot zone.

And.

And so they came over and were talking.

They were like, hey, you know, we got this book.

Do you like birding in Cemeteries?

I said, yeah, I do.

And they said, yeah, we got this book, and we're trying to check off all the places in the book.

It's called Cemetery Birding.

And I just started laughing.

I literally had my hands on my knees.

I was laughing so hard.

I said, I don't know how I tell you this or not, but I wrote that book.

And they were just like, what?

And we took a bunch of pictures together and stuff, but that was so cool to me.

And they explained, you know, that he was really in a cemetery, she was in birding.

And.

And this was like this thing that they could go check off, you know, each weekend and go to some of these cemeteries.

I thought, that is so cool.

That's the thing.

If you got the one, I got the one.

And you just got your payout.

Yeah.

Because maybe our audience does or doesn't know.

But, like, writing these books probably hasn't made you the multimillionaire that you set out to be in the beginning.

No, no, that's not how that works.

Not at all.

I think that at some point in my life, I really believed that every one of these authors was sitting pretty.

Oh, yeah.

No, we can't all be Lee Childs.

Okay, let's get real.

Like, a lot of these, I'M glad they are.

Yeah.

But there's the commercial successes that have made people, you know, a living, and then there's like, I think of yours as a more purpose and mission driven and hopefully that will catch up to being, you know, viable commercially or whatever.

The other part of the goal is the other adult part of the goal.

I'm not projecting, I'm not telling you what you're trying to do.

But I'm just saying in general, the more authors that I've talked to, especially in Texas publications, it's because they really had something in their heart they had to get on paper.

Right.

I still have a day job.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So let's quickly pivot to your most recently released book, the Wild Women.

Right.

I like this book because even though it's not birds, it still is creating an opportunity to see the extraordinary in ordinary people.

These women are all amazing and have done meaningful things and made meaningful contributions to society and on behalf of nature.

But they're also just a lot of people that, many of which we've never heard of.

Ordinary in the sense that they're not celebrities necessarily in certain scales, but they've done extraordinary things.

And you're revealing that just like the parking lot, just like the cemetery is a extraordinary opportunities in ordinary places.

And I see this as the connection to this book that is a little bit of a departure from the previous two.

Yeah, it was a departure.

And you're exactly right.

Like, also still on theme in that conservation, obviously is the through line there.

And it does start off with saving the birds, which of course is the big conservation, the first big conservation movement in Texas.

I mean, I wanted to tell these stories of these women who their stories had not been told yet.

Something that's really important to me.

Early days of social media, I was out, I was walking around town, Lake, Lady Bird Lake.

It was beautiful evening.

This woman who I knew socially came up to me and she said, oh, you know, I love seeing your social media posts on Facebook.

You've inspired me to get outside more.

I always wonder what you're doing.

I try to catch up.

And I was like, huh, well, you know, that's kind of powerful.

That's interesting.

I mean, and I will say, you know, she.

She overshared also, you know, but that happens sometimes as a writer.

But I walked away from that thinking, well, that's an interesting power there of social media, of media in general, is how do you use that as a tool to help them see themselves doing something that they might not have Otherwise done.

And this is before I'd gone to work for Texas Children of Nature.

And so when thinking about these women in Wild Women for good, I really wanted others to see themselves in these stories and say to themselves, well, they had three kids and aging parents and, you know, all of these different competing things and a career and this and that, but they stepped forward and they did this.

Why can't I?

Why would I limit myself if they were able to do it, why can't I?

Again, kind of going back to having the conversation with myself of what's the purpose of the book?

And thankfully, you know, I wrote it with my mom.

I mean, she did a lot of the research, I wrote it.

It was great to have that sounding board, you know, with her on it.

But we really decided there were sort of three buckets that everything sort of fell into.

One was to tell the story of these women, and two was to tell the story of conservation in Texas.

We kind of have to do things a little different in the Lone Star State.

And then to inspire others to step forward.

Oh, yeah.

A kind of harkening back to those themes of, well, how do you do that?

You make it relatable, you make it inviting.

Kind of in the book, in addition to the stories, is I really wanted it to be photo rich because I believe that if we're going to talk about history in our day and age, like, you have to tell it through visuals as much as language.

And so, you know, worked really hard with Texas A and press to come up with that layout and that look and to really include a lot of those photos in there to bring those stories to life and again, to help others see, you know, these are just normal women.

You know, they're just out there doing their thing and they don't always look great and they don't always look polished and they don't always have a photo op in every kind of picture.

You know, I mean, it's.

I was very specific when I sent out the ask of a lot of the women that are in the book or the families that historical women were included.

I said, I don't want headshots.

I want them out in the field doing their thing.

And again, making that relatable and tangible for people to be able to come into those stories, you know, and feel like, oh, all right, I see how this is done.

I think I hear this is hopefully exposing folks that may have something in them that needs to get out and to let Them know that these women also were probably very similar circumstances, very similar opportunities, very similar barriers and did it.

And that if you really have something in you that you need to get out, do it.

But also like, if it's not the right time, you know, let's acknowledge that you can also have something in you and we don't want it.

We're not trying to beat you up and make you feel bad because these women did it and you're not.

It is just to say that when the time's right, your opportunity will be there.

And if you really got to get it out of you, you should.

Here's some examples of how it was done.

You're exactly right.

And that scalability was really important to me in that.

And that not everybody had to conserve 30,000 acres for an endangered species or single handedly save the sea turtles or, you know, whatever.

Like they didn't have to be like this monumental kind of women.

There's also much more sort of day to day, you know, things that have happened and those are woven kind of throughout a lot of the storylines that there might be a sub story within that, within a person's story of someone sort of who's helping in that capacity.

Because that's also something that's really, really important to me is that we take action for the time that's right for us in the way that we can.

And it doesn't have to be.

You're planting your flag and I'm going to save the drinking water of San Antonio.

Just a small, just a small little.

Project, small thing, you know, it can be.

Well, I'm interested in this.

I'm going to do what I can today.

And you contribute a little bit and then maybe you contribute a little bit more.

Maybe that's enough.

You know, maybe, you know, spent a little bit of time working on it.

And then you can back away and say, okay, somebody else needs to take this forward.

I will say in the chapter about policy, they really wanted me to shorten that chapter down.

And I said no, because when you're working on policy, the people that start something are usually not the people that finish it.

That it has to be handed off again and again and again to get it right and to finish it.

You know, that's a whole other through line of people in there and that it's okay to pass off those things.

I talked to Some women that are in the book, I think they are staying at or they've stayed at something too long and they think they're the only people that can solve it, instead of really realizing that, no, there's all these beautiful people that are willing to step in, but because you're so capable and taking care of it all at one time, there's no space for that.

But if that person was to actually to leave, I think people would step forward to take over and to take it to the next level.

And it's ego doesn't allow us sometimes to do those things.

It is what it is.

It is what it is.

And some people are better at managing that and saying, okay, I had my turn, I had my time with this, and now let's see where it goes with somebody else.

And to me, that's exciting to sort of like hand it off to the next person and then watch what happens.

And some days you might not like what's happening, and then other days you're like, wow, look at that again, having that scalability for everybody to be able to relate.

Is there in Wild Women for good examples of women, because I think, like, the audience probably needs to know that not everybody that has accomplished meaningful things did it because they jumped whole hog, changed their career.

They were career conservationists.

They were nine to fivers getting paid to do this work.

A lot of really wonderful things happen from people that incorporate this passion project into their service.

Part of their life.

They're doing their nine to five and then they got some time, a little bit of discretionary time outside, after, during, before family, everything like that.

And I think there's some examples in the book.

Right.

Do you have a favorite?

There wasn't careers in the outdoors for women.

It really wasn't until the nonprofits started coming online.

Because even early days getting jobs at Texas Parks and Wildlife or the U.S. fish and Wildlife or the Forest Service, those were hard to get.

Maybe you were an admin.

Which of those are important to you?

Maybe you worked in finance, you know, that kind of thing.

But to be a biologist or any of the ologists was extremely difficult.

And especially to work your way up the ladder into those higher paying, better kind of career paths.

Yeah, really, the nonprofits opened up the doors for women to be able to shine and take on these bigger leadership roles, which was super cool.

I feel like not just the doors Open.

But the barn door and the gate.

Right.

You know, all of it.

As it should.

As it should be.

Right?

Yeah.

There's still a couple of doors.

Oh, there's.

Yeah.

No, there's.

No, it's not perfect.

It's not.

They're jarred.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're cracked.

Like we need to burst them open.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I've seen it too.

I mean even, you know, I kind of came from.

When I graduated college, I went through the wildlife program at Texas State University.

And when I looked around myself in the class, it was, you know, we see more and more women showing up and like that truth doesn't take away from the other truth, that that ratio isn't necessarily showing itself in the career field now because women still have choices that they got to make for themselves and then also still barriers that are kind of precluding things.

But it is refreshing to see more and more breadth of perspective and everybody's working together but they're bringing their perspectives to look at the same problem in different ways that create creative opportunities for solutions or programs and tests and experiments, etc.

And that's really refreshing and I think that's what this book helps reveal and that whatever's in your heart and however much space you have to give, you can fill that space up and those contributions can be meaningful.

And that's one of the take homes, I think, from the theme of the book.

And I'm still digging through it.

All right.

You know, I read a lot and I'm definitely going to read every one of my friends books as I can.

But there's a stack beside the nightstand that is only growing and not getting shorter.

Well, I look forward to putting your book there.

Well, we're going to get to that, I promise you, because you are my accountability partner.

And that's another one of those that's right.

Things here that I wanted to acknowledge is not just the mentorship but here lately you've also been a little bit of a hype person.

We'll have these random calls where we'll call one another like where are you at?

What you doing?

I got a question also.

Where are you at on your book?

Have you put your proposal in?

I'm kind of a very slow, very deliberate kind of whenever I want to create, I'm a little bit slow.

I want to.

I'm more systems focused in the beginning and I have to get out of my way about systems when you're starting and when you're starting something new.

To me, it's so important to give yourself the grace to be able to fail.

You're not striving for perfection, you're striving to produce.

This is where you can kind of get better at whatever is you vision for yourself.

But you also have to get out of analysis paralysis, which can be really trapping where you just feel like you're analyzing and analyzing, analyzing.

And it's just like spinning your wheels, you know, and at some point you gotta get out of the truck and get the wedge and put some stuff under the tires and just say, we're gonna see if it goes.

And it makes it.

It's just so easy, I mean, as a writer, as a creative, to overthink everything is this useful?

Is somebody gonna like it?

Why am I doing this?

Am I spending too much time on this and not enough time on something else?

You know, all of those things that get in our way at some point you just have to go, I want to do this because I like it.

And I hope other people like it too.

Yeah, you know, okay, this thing's gonna get a little longer.

There's a part of every episode that I just like to jump into.

What's a couple of things that you're digesting now?

It could be a couple of books, a documentary, a blog that you're enjoying, an essay that you recently.

What would you suggests that other folks may want to take a look at?

Yeah, that's a great question.

You know, I mean, it's summertime, and so this is usually my time to write.

I do really try to focus a lot on writing.

It's like a reverse winter for people that are, you know, in the north.

What I'm reading right now is really related to the book project that I'm working on, which is not conservation oriented.

And so I am learning a lot.

And that is really lighten up my brain.

I'm enjoying that.

And I didn't realize how much I needed that until I started it a couple weeks ago.

And so that's been really awesome.

I was in earlier this year.

We took a trip to Scotland and England.

Right.

And I loved every second of that.

I mean, talk about immersion in nature and history.

It's just like, you know, you could go back there a lifetime and still not learn it, but it's something.

On the plane ride back, I was so excited to get home.

And I just wanted to get home to my birds and my wildlife and my like this little ecosystem that I have right here and like, hyper focus on it, like down to the little tiny mushrooms that are growing after the rain.

I just needed to.

I've.

All spring I've spent away from here on a book tour and birding and big trips and, you know, all these things.

And I was just like, I just want to see what's around me at really deep level and think about, well, what does this plant do?

Oh, look at this type of bee.

I hadn't seen this today.

Like, really just kind of hyper focusing on that.

Sometimes we just need to do that instead of spreading ourselves out there in the world and kind of spreading thin to look really intensely at what's around us.

And I'm saying that and it's really interesting that Richard Louvre, who I really appreciate, his new book is called Noticing.

And I just bought it.

I haven't even cracked it open, but I'm like, are we on this same level again?

I mean, it's really exciting.

I look forward to cracking that open, looking at it, because it is about noticing our natural world around us.

So.

But anything that Richard Louvre writes, I think is good.

I did buy another book called the Feather wars and yeah.

All about, you know, fighting the millinery trade and haven't bust into that one.

I just bought these like two days ago.

Yeah.

Here's the thing about reading as a writer.

Everything you read is usually focused on what you're writing.

Like, people ask me all the time if I've read different novels and I'm just, no, I haven't.

I enjoy reading the types of books I just mentioned.

But you have to allow yourself the time to sit down and read.

Yeah.

And create that space for yourself.

Some people are great at like reading at night right before they go to bed.

I'm not really that person.

I can a little bit, but as soon as I am in the bedroom, like, that's where I disconnect from everything.

And like, I don't want to bring in somebody else's thoughts into that area.

But like sitting on my deck or sitting right here and reading, you just have to make space for it.

And I think in this life where there's so many distractions, including our phones, you know that it's hard being someone that I work from home as a writer, but also for the Victor Emanuel Nature Scholarships, you have to tell yourself that reading, that you've completed all your tasks, but reading is actually one also the tasks that you have to do.

And when I take a trip, a vacation for me, I'm not sitting around reading.

I can't.

I don't know how to do that.

You're doing.

I'm doing.

And oddly enough, if I'm on the plane flying somewhere, I'm writing.

I get a lot of writing done on the airplane.

So yeah, it's hard.

But I would recommend those two books for sure.

As far as a documentary or.

Oh yes, there is one that I highly recommend and it has nothing to do with Texas.

I did watch something on the flight to England and it's Richard Attenborough and he is looking at the urban wildlife of London.

And it is the most beautiful documentary.

I was so enthralled by it, I just.

And maybe that is kind of also what was sort of sparking this like, I want to go home and I want to think about the wildlife I live by and that lives in my urban world here.

I love it.

You know.

Have you heard of or read the book by.

I think it's by Christopher Brown and it's called A Natural History.

You have a vacant lot.

Yes.

Have you really?

Oh, of course, yes.

It's another one of those books on that ever growing list.

And I'm like, man, it's such an intriguing topic.

It's such an intriguing topic.

And yes, on when Chris launched that book, I had the opportunity to go on one of his book tour things with him in San Antonio and love, love that book and love thinking again about what is the wildlife that's around us all the time, but what is the nature that's around us all the time?

You know, there's a term, it's called green blindness.

You know that we're blind to the nature sometimes that's around us and that we feel like we have to go seek it out, go to somewhere instead.

Of like, this is an expedition, right?

Gotta load up the car, get the gear and gotta get, you know, the supplies and the coolers ready.

And no, you can just go walk around, look at things.

Yeah, you don't need a rope and a first aid kit.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, Jen, let's close this out.

The last question I've got for you and I like to leave listeners with an invitation to close out.

And so the invitation here is, if someone listening doesn't think of themselves as a naturalist, what would you invite them to do this week to prove that they are okay.

Something that they could do this week to help them think about that.

That's what they are.

You've mentioned it several times.

Just walking out your door looking at a mushroom.

What is this growing in your yard?

Why is it there?

What is its name?

How does it contribute?

I think of those sorts of things.

It's Just like these really great opportunities.

Anybody, everybody can do that.

And the moment that they do, the moment that they observe, they just became a naturalist.

Yeah, because all it is is attention.

It is.

It's about slowing down, it's about focusing.

As I'm talking, I'm looking out at the leaves, you know, blowing in the wind out there, you know, can be something as simple as that.

Just taking note of what's happening around you.

It's going to be a really hot week.

You know, we're still in summer.

It's just going to be hot from here until October.

Like, let's get real, you know, right.

In those moments, it's hard to push yourself to get out there, you know, so maybe it is the time to read that book or watch that documentary, you know, or make a plan for, okay, when the weather does turn nice, we're going to go camping at this place or we're going to.

Or I'm going to visit a new park that I haven't seen.

I know it's right down the street.

I've just never gone there yet.

We live in Texas, 95% private lands.

Right.

And people always think about the state parks, but we have all these other parks, city parks, river parks and county parks.

And if you just look in your area, there's probably a lot more parks than you realize.

And if you can't find a park, you can find a cemetery.

There's a book that can help you on that too.

You can help me with that too.

Well, I really enjoyed hearing that and having this whole conversation.

And you brought up a point that I didn't think about until you said it, which was, you're inside right now, you're looking outside, you're noticing the leaves, you're being a naturalist from an air conditioned chair by simply observing the conditions happening outside, giving it a moment of attention.

And again, being a naturalist, the barriers that exist are the barriers that we've created or allowed to creep into our minds because there's no other hobby or interest that is more accessible than being a naturalist.

And going back to the idea of just sitting down with a documentary and.

Or reading a field guide.

I mean, I know a lot of people don't just sit down and read field guides, but like just skimming through.

We did it when we were kids and that's like literally like, I'm going to have to go see that.

I'm going to have to go see that, like just being wowed.

I also think that being a naturalist isn't exactly about seeing the organisms in person.

It's also about, like, studying and being aware.

It's again, about yielding and giving attention to things that are natural and part of our surroundings, whether it's that far off pristine wilderness or the built environment of our backyard.

Like, the opportunity exists.

Screw it.

It exists inside.

I have cobwebs in every corner of my home.

Okay.

I might want to spend some time just figuring out who they are and what they're up to.

Yeah, yeah.

Don't look around too much in this house.

There are other living beings here.

Aaron's gonna come off top rope, be like, don't tell people.

Jen, this has been a wonderful conversation.

Thank you.

Again, thanks for spending some time with us on Modern Texas Naturalist.

And a special thanks to my friend Del Little, who somehow takes all of these convers and turns them into a podcast.

If this conversation made you think of someone, send it their way.

If something in today's conversation sparked your curiosity, follow it.

Read the book, visit the place, learn the bird, ask another question.

But better yet, step outside and see what you can discover for yourself.

Until next time, stay curious.

Sam, It.