June 2026 • Nebraskaland 67
I FELL
IN LOVE
WITH WILD
NEBRASKA.
I
s t i l l re m e m b e r my f i r s t m o n t h o n t h e j o b a t
Nebraskaland. It was January 1993. I was a newlywed
and had just landed a position as a staff photographer
and writer for a magazine I had loved since I was a kid
in Lincoln. My heart was full and my head was spinning.
On the first day, I was introduced to Carl Wolfe, my office
mate. Wolfe, a biologist and longtime outdoor educator,
greeted me kindly then quickly pointed at the paper wasp
nest suspended by fishing line from the ceiling near my new
desk. "That is Dick Turpin's. He just moved to the second
floor but left the nest behind. He thought it still might have
wasps in it." He couldn't help but grin.
Fortunately, I wouldn't be at my desk much. I would be
out learning to be a storyteller.
My first day afield was spent photographing field
sparrows riding prairie seed heads down to the ground
to feed during a snowstorm and fading light at Bur Oak
Wildlife Management Area near Seward. My first wildlife
story was documenting the daily rhythms of wintering bald
eagles during a subzero week at Lake McConaughy. I used
a cardboard refrigerator box as a blind covered with an old
white bed sheet.
My assigned gear was a used Nikon F3 with a motordrive
that shot a blistering six frames per second, and a 24mm,
50mm, 200mm macro and 400mm f3.5 prime lenses. No
autofocus. No zooms. Old school. We shot unforgiving
color slide film only and at $12 a roll for purchase and
processing 36 exposures, there was little room for technical
error or poor compositional judgement. When legendary
Nebraskaland staffer Jon Farrar reviewed my first photos
on the light table in his dimly-lit corner office, he said, "Kid,
your work is different." I took it as a compliment.
At our all-staff meetings, I learned the complexity of how
a monthly statewide magazine was planned. We worked
on issues up to two years in advance while sitting around
a table stained with coffee and donuts arguing content and
jockeying for position and placement for our stories that we
would write, photograph and assist in layout. I didn't know
it then, but I was in the best storyteller's boot camp I could
ever imagine.
OPPOSITE TOP: Whitman Road on a fresh
June morning feels like the heart of the
Nebraska Sandhills.
OPPOSITE BOTTOM LEFT: A burrowing
owl displays at Buffalo Gap National
Grasslands in South Dakota.
OPPOSITE BOTTOM RIGHT: Caught
on a time-lapse camera, a windmill
stock tank and clearing thunderstorm
is revealed at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln Gudmundsen
Ranch in the Nebraska Sandhills.
