Documenting natural Raleigh

I recently found out about a terrific blog about our city. Called Raleigh Nature, it's set to become a book called The Natural History of Raleigh: Nature Lore & Wildlife Inside or Near the Beltline. The author is John Dancy-Jones, whose fine papermaking work at The Paper Plant was recently profiled by the News & Observer. Born in 1953, John grew up in Raleigh's then-new Gatewood subdivision (next door to where I live now in Lockwood), and developed an abiding love of parks, the paths that would later become greenways, and even the so-called "waste places" where nature peeks out from the city's hard edges.

John already has another book under his belt; in 2001, he published Snapper: My life with snapping turtles. A chapbook essay about captive snapping turtles, it was written, illustrated using linoleum-block prints, and physically produced on a letterpress at the Paper Plant. Fred Chappell, North Carolina's poet laureate, praised Snapper as a "lovely" papermaking project and a "highly personal but still widely educational" work. It's not surprising that John's book projects would be educational: His work teaching papermaking to children led to a part-time job teaching students with learning problems and a master's in education from N.C. State. John now teaches science full time.

Here's how he describes his fascination with our city's natural side -- a fascination that's beautifully communicated in the stories and images on his blog:

Raleigh has one of the nation’s best and most prominent greenway systems. In, addition we retain some of the best aspects of Southern towns -- ready access to rural settings, and a real connection to the land, as partly evidenced by the growing popularity of the sustainable, heritage agriculture movement. We love our nature, whether it's jogging the greenways or hunting doves, and the wildlife and natural areas are treasures important to people of all political persuasions. This blog explores those interests through the eyes of an amateur but well-informed naturalist, concentrating on resources inside or within a mile of the beltline.

It's definitely worth a bookmark for anyone who loves our Capital City.

(Photo of and by John Dancy-Jones from Raleigh Nature.)