About

I’ve been on this hill since 2014.

I’m Leigh. I’m a Texas Master Naturalist in the East Texas Piney Woods, and I serve on the training team for the Piney Wood Lakes Chapter.

I spent my career with the federal government and retired early with a long list of things I finally meant to go learn. Then I left the city for this hill and set about learning the place itself instead. I wanted to know what grows here, what moves through, and what the water does in a dry year.

Then my father had a heart attack and my mother’s dementia deepened, and all of it happened while the country was locked down. I spent those years caring for them. My mother died not long after. Her whole life pointed at her family. When she called she always opened the same way. “Well, how are things at your place?” I miss hearing that come down the phone line more than I know how to say. The difference this hill made in that stretch is most of why I write about it now. Some of this is still me answering her question.

What I have these days is quieter. Volunteer days with my chapter, state parks and preserves, a kayak when the water’s right, and the Texas wine country when I can manage it. Most of what I write starts as something I noticed out here and couldn’t stop turning over. I still haven’t finished learning this hill.