More from the book...

I could have just taken the hundreds of photos that appear later in this book and made a coffee table book out of them. I very well may do that, for those that don’t care to read the gory details, or the anecdotes that accompany the photos in this work.

But I wanted to do more.

I wanted to share my story with those of you who like me, live an unremarkable life, but one filled with pain and loss and grief. For those who have had to try to overcome overwhelming odds, and seemingly endless obstacles.

This book is a voyage of discovery and salvation. Of suffering and pain and disappointment, turned into hope and joy and beauty.

I have updated it as I have been writing it. For me it seems, life offers one challenge after another. But one thing now remains constant in my life. My love of nature, of the birds, and the joy and connection it brings me. Closer now to the natural world than I have ever been, it fills my heart and soul with peace, joy and amazement.

No matter how my life goes, this time that I have spent compiling these photographs has been the turning point in my life.

The one thing I needed more than ever was a refuge.

And I found it. Where the birds live.

On a commute home from my last full-time job, where I was being abused by a horrific, controlling manager, and driving a hellish four hours per day, I came to a realization.
I said, out loud in the car, with nobody else to hear me.

I am not going to make it.

And I knew. I knew more than anything I have ever known, that to continue the life I was leading, and working that job, that I would not survive.

When you read the stories in this book, what you are reading is my life. A common and unassuming man, who had the same dreams every common man does. To get married, raise a family, have their own home, and a good career. A comfortable retirement to share with a wife, into the “golden years”.

What you will read is a story of how that entire life fell apart. How it wasn’t only lost, but destroyed. How the losses that followed would bring me to my knees, over and over again. And how each time, there was just enough left to stand up again.

And then, at one point. I picked up the camera again, and with a long lens and a shattered heart, I found the last hope of my life, the refuge that I would come to love and call my own.

I will share with you the stories of the birds I have photographed. The amazing things I have seen. The wonders that nature revealed to me. The funny moments. The new friends I’ve found there. A voyage of discovery, of hope, of revelation.

There comes a time, in everyone’s life…where all you can see are the years passing by.
And I have made up my mind, that those days…are gone. – Rascal Flatts (I’m Movin On)