Photo Essays

Returning Home

What does it mean to call a place home? For over a century, elk were lost to their native landscape of Southwest Virginia. In 2012, a variety of state, local, and private partners came together to bring the species back to the landscape. In a decade, the herd has grown from 75 to nearly 300 elk.


Fighting Fire with Fire

The burn starts out slow, a few flames rolling across the eastern edge of the unit as the crew tests the weather conditions and makes sure the fire does not cross the swampy phragmites at the property’s boundaries. Once the test is complete, the drip torch crew proceeds to make their way back and forth across the preserve until the 43-acre burn unit is covered in flames and enveloped in a haze of smoke. You can hear the crackling, snapping, and roaring as the fire burns different types of vegetation. 


 
 

Affect(ed)

Ten is the magic number after you’ve had cancer. The medical community says that ten years after you are pronounced cancer free, you are no more likely to get cancer than any other person.

Ten years. Ten years since the doctor revealed the benign tumor was actually cancerous. Ten years cancer free. Ten years of bottled up anxiety and sleepless nights. Ten long years worrying that every change in my body signaled something far more sinister.

 
 

Fields of Dreams: Young Farmers of Rockbridge County, Va.

For Logan and Luke Grant, farming is more than a job or a hobby. It’s in their blood.

From the time they could walk, the brothers tagged along when their father fed the calves. When they were older, they helped him cut hay. They were operating tractors long before they were old enough to get a driver’s license.


A Day on the Sixpence

Captain Fred Penney cruises the Boston Harbor for lobster. He starts his day before dawn every morning, pulling up cage after cage that he set the week before.


 
 

South of Orlando

Memory is remembering, revisiting pieces of information the brain has stored. Memory shapes the way we return to a place. We associate certain emotions or events with a place based on what we remember. Some memories stand out in our minds as if we only left the place moments ago. Other memories are distant, a fuzzy inkling of a place once known.