Milestones: 14 years of blogging

By Daniel Barringer, Preserve Manager.

It seems only yesterday but December 27, 2004 was the first post on this weblog. Tim Burris at Mariton Wildlife Sanctuary joined me in a commitment to write “about two” posts per month since then. I think we’ve far exceeded that and still haven’t run out of things to say.

Many earlier posts are no longer available online, not that anyone would want to go searching that far back in time. A switch to a new platform included an archive of a few years’ prior posts, but not the whole blog back to day one. Fortunately I’ve saved documentation, and my lovely spouse made me a book in 2010, a curated set of photos and writings from the blog’s first five years. We weren’t even married yet when the blog first started!

I started taking digital photos in 2000, and have uncounted slides from before that. Here’s a photo from a Stewardship Staff meeting in September, 2000, with Tim Burris making an emphatic point. More than half the people in this photo still work in Land Stewardship today, more than 18 years later. Good thing we all haven’t aged much since then! (The meeting room has since improved from the basement of the barn at Hildacy shown here.)

We hope you enjoy the turn of the calendar year 2019 and have time to reflect on where you’re going as well as where you’ve been! We’re grateful for having the opportunity to share with you the wonder and joy of Natural Lands preserves.