Once referred to as a “wall of woods” the Georgia longleaf pine forest represented a diverse ecosystem rivaled only by tropical forests. Georgia’s forests were part of the larger southern Coastal Plains longleaf forest, which covered 92 million acres between the south side of Virginia and East Texas. 

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I grew up in the shadows of that forest. “Shadow” because the forest today is only a pale and ghostly image of its former self. The forest that once stretched for thousands of miles was fragmented beyond recognition by 1900. Despite (or perhaps because of) its decline, the forest has captivated me, and like the artists and writers before me, it has been a backdrop to much of my life’s work and research.