April 20, 2010. I was driving from Vermont to New Mexico. At a truck stop on I-81 I slid a credit card into a fuel pump. This triggered an audio speaker to blare advertisements and news while it pumped gas into my vehicle. It was then that I heard about an explosion on an oil platform off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico - a fire was raging, people suspected dead, no oil spilling. Two days later came news of the first, five-mile long oil slick.

I felt an immediate, instinctual call to go to the Gulf - to walk every bit of shoreline, barrier island, marsh, bridge and pier. I wanted to bear witness to this time and to share my view of the Gulf of Mexico. I struggled with the fact that I’d be using petroleum for the trip and considered my alternatives. In the end, I realized walking was not an option and the call of instinct overrode other concerns, so off I went.

I was born and raised on the Gulf of Mexico in Sarasota, Florida. Before I could walk, I bonded to the Gulf’s soft white sand, endless mounds of colorful shells and sparkling light green water. I learned to swim among the minnows, coquinas and dolphins on Longboat Key. I first saw the power of nature as I watched hurricanes roar past my front porch and discovered ancient mysteries as I hunted dinosaur fossils on Venice Beach. I learned patience fishing in Sarasota Bay with my father; joy and playfulness feeding seagulls with my mother; and creativity and magic gathering clams on Ana Maria Island with my grandmother. There is a Hopi word, Sipapu: the portal through which the Hopi people emerged to the present world. The Gulf of Mexico is my Sipapu and though I’ve left my birthplace to roam far and wide, it is as much a part of me as my DNA.

July 27, 2010. I began my journey south driving through the remains of tropical storm Bonnie as it headed north from the Gulf. By this time, the blown oil well was declared “capped” and the situation “under control.” There were 11 people dead, 17 injured. Over 6,000 birds, 609 sea turtles and 100 mammals were dead. Over 400 sea turtles and 2,000 birds had been collected visibly oiled. I wondered about the dead and injured that didn’t show up from the depths to be counted. An estimated 205 million gallons of crude oil had spewed from a hole in the ocean floor 5,000 feet below the water’s surface. A reported 2 million gallons of chemical dispersants had been sprayed into the warm blue-green waters. In 3 months time a new Gulf mixture had formed, and with it new destinies for its creatures – human, mammal, microbe, reptile, winged and vegetative.

I traveled alone in a Toyota RAV4 with a modest budget - funded by friends, family and collectors. A cargo box on top of the car held gear and clothes, a hitch box on the back carried food and cooking supplies. I slept most nights in state parks, in the back of the car for safety, speed and economy. Heat, humidity and biting insects spurred my creativity and by the third day I had fashioned magnetic mosquito screens for the car windows, stowed my sleeping bag and acquired a battery powered fan to help me survive the 90-degree nights. By the time I reached Key West, with midnight lows of 98 degrees, I was curling myself around a plastic water bottle of ice to cool off and coating myself with Benadryl spray - my sole relief from relentless fire ant and mosquito bites.

Between the mouth of the Rio Grande and the islands off southern Florida, I traveled about 3,000 miles of coast. I touched nearly every square inch of the Texas shore, dipped into Louisiana’s mysterious bayous, and peered into the mouth of the Mississippi River with its hurricane ravaged deltas and neighborhoods. I walked the sunny beaches and bays of Mississippi and Alabama with shrimpers and oil cleanup crews. I roamed oyster beds, barrier islands, high rises and dunes of the Florida panhandle and waded into the Everglades. I swam with corals and cruise ships where the Gulf mixes with Atlantic Ocean off the Florida Keys. In The Dry Tortugas I ventured deep into the southeastern Gulf and rubbed shoulders with Greenpeace activists and ghosts of Civil War conspirators.

Each day I photographed from sunrise to sunset and beyond. There was some pre-planning, but mostly I awoke to each dawn and followed my intuition. I stuck to coastal highways and back roads and photographed everything that would permit me to - and some things that wouldn’t. What I couldn’t photograph, I burned into my memory. As I traveled, my thoughts slipped backwards through time and I caught glimpses and imaginings of history and prehistory. I wanted to record this moment in time, but I also felt compelled to transcend it - to capture the past and future that were being revealed. To do this required a daily practice of keeping to myself as much as possible. I passed quietly among the many ongoing environmental and social issues of the coast as well as the daily activities and crises of those affected by the oil disaster.

As I drove among the massive oil refineries of Texas, I thought about the birth of the Gulf in a time when reptiles ruled, dinosaurs died, and a mass of land called Pangea split. Watching waves crash on a beach in a storm, I wondered about pirates and explorers that once sailed those waves hundreds of years ago. While I picked plastic bags from the shore, I wondered about the first moment a human stood in that spot. When alligators silently materialized out of flat, quiet water in the Everglades, I looked into their eyes and tried to imagine the world from their point of view. As men on fishing piers tossed their catches on warm pavement - to flop and gasp among discarded water bottles, and fishing line - I pictured the changes in the Gulf Coast since the time fish came to be. Swimming with my mother in the warm, green water at a beach I grew up on, I thought about a time when she will no longer be here to swim with me, a time when I am no longer here, and a time when the Gulf is no longer here.

My physical journey along the Gulf came to a close on October 27. In the end, the journey took me far beyond the oil disaster, beyond the highways and fishing piers, and beyond a body of water. It took me deep into an exploration of myself as a part of this planet, as Homo Sapien, as a person. As I work with the images, my journey continues. My thoughts are daily drawn toward study and wonder on deeper and broader dimensions of the Gulf of Mexico - the evolution of it; of humankind; and of the other creatures on this planet with me. The images I’ve chosen to share in this portfolio are only a beginning. The project as a whole is still a work-in-progress and there will be other work in other forms. I offer this portfolio, made for friends and supporters, now publicly to mark one year since the Macondo well exploded and as a first glimpse into my journey called The Gulf Project.