My Mission

Often times I find myself wondering why I'm doing this and why it's taken such a hold on my life. It doesn't take much thought to bring up the main pillars of this though:

Firstly, it's for my kids to know what I was up to when I was going through some pretty tough times in my life. Growing up alone and without an immediate family other than my grandparents and brother in pretty vital times of my life has left me feeling a multitude of ways. After the initial period of just taking care of my family I created with my wife, the best way I knew how to deal with what I was feeling that I had lost was to search for myself through exercising my brain with all of the things I'd grown up doing as hobbies like music, painting, tinkering with electronics and programming, getting interested in hazardous materials, the healthcare field, etc. but one has always stuck with me: the arts. They've never failed me, taught me a ton about myself and boy the feeling I get when I have completed a work and can stand back and look at what all my hard work brought... It's both uplifting and upholding. Them knowing that these are the things that I looked toward in some hard times in my life may be the difference in them succeeding or overcoming something they were dealing with, and I can't think of a better toolset to hand off other than just outright love which is offered 24/7/365 anyways.

Secondly, it's important to me to log and record data that will help solidify Kentucky as being the state with the second-most naturally occurring arches in the United States, as well as documenting several waterfalls and other natural phenomena. I've been doing this for a while now (about 3 years total) and the ground I've covered and the stories I've gathered on these places and my journeys to them is nearly invaluable to me. Securing this data and having it stored in a place by someone that's a true steward of our forests and what lies under them is one of the most important things that I've been involved in in my life and I take it seriously when needed.

Thirdly, I wish to see a few changes made in the way some things sit in our forests. If you've followed along with me for a while, you can see that yearly I take a field trip with Kentucky Heartwood, which is a non-profit that was organized with the protection of our Daniel Boone National Forest and the other natural areas in Kentucky in mind. I don't plan on taking on the bourbon industry because I do undoubtedly understand the income this brings in and the fact that our natural resources put food on the tables of a lot of our citizens here in Kentucky. However, even just starting a trail at Pine Island Double Falls would be an insane leap in what I believe in when it comes to our Forest Service as of late from the ways that I've seen some of the sites that they log are left. I plan on fully mobilizing this year and putting my focus on asking questions and getting answers on when, where and how I can start moving towards getting a trail planned, initialized and executed out there. This will be just the start, but a heavy start indeed.

The fourth point is that I hope to learn more about what I've lived in here in Kentucky my whole life and pass that on first and foremost to my family and then to anyone else that deems it important or at least even interesting. Learning about life and what's under and around us has been very rewarding; it's helped me to understand a lot about myself and the ecosystems around me as a person too. From the common little eastern red newts to the super rare and ephemeral Kentucky Jade Slipper, there isn't a thing I don't learn out there that makes me ready to go back out and apply what I've learned.