2025 - Combining Cycling and Bird Photography

American Black Duck - Chatham MA - December 2024

As 2024 comes to a close, my hope for 2025 is to spend a sabbatical year heavily immersed in multiple US based adventures that combine my passions for bicycling and bird photography. I use the word sabbatical to indicate an inversion of attention. Largely over the last 5 years, both my cycling and my bird photography have been fit around my other responsibilities that largely shaped my calendar. I am trying to approach 2025 with a different mindset, one where I give myself permission to generally put aside other responsibilities and indulge myself in the time and freedom to make my hobbies of cycling and bird photography my primary focus. Almost all of my favorite memories from the past decade have been outdoors: traveling, cycling, and photographing birds and nature. What if I spend a year prioritizing this time?

Race Point Beach - Provincetown MA - July 2024

I find myself with many questions I would like to consider. What does combining these two passions of mine feel like in practice? What might this year do for my mental health with which I have struggled with at times over the past several years? What might it do for my physical well being which has deteriorated materially since 2019? Can I meaningfully develop as a photographer both technically and artistically? How does it feel to spend much more time outdoors and living in the moment? How might the experience of this year reshape my priorities for my life going forward? How do I incorporate this mindset not just as I plan travel to different parts of the country, but also when I am home in Harvard or in Chatham? Will this year feed and grow my passions or satisfy and diminish them? Will this year feel selfish or liberating or both? I do not know what curve balls life will throw my way in 2025, but I am planning the year in small chunks that can easily be changed, postponed or cancelled to give me the flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances yet still plan the year I want to live.

I currently have 5 trips, ranging from 1 to 3 weeks, at different stages of the planning process. Each of these combines cycling and bird photography although the emphasis varies from cycling focused, to bird photography focused, to trips that are a pure blend.

Taos, New Mexico - October 2019

I will start my year with a January trip to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico. Bosque del Apache is well known for its epic winter birding and photography especially around sunrise. I will bundle up for the cold sunrises and early morning photography, then return to my hotel for a late breakfast. I plan to bring a bike so that I can cycle in the warmish afternoons. I will carry my camera with me on the bike for opportunistic bird photography while I cycle on gravel roads along the Rio Grande.

Na Pali Coast - Kauai, Hawaii - February 1999

I am in the process of planning a birding trip to Hawaii in February, visiting Kauai and the Big Island. This trip will be even more bird focused, but I do plan to rent a bike one or two days while I am there for some aerobic exercise and to add Hawaii to my list of states cycled.

Sand Hill Crane - Christmas, Florida - February 2024

I am at the very early stages of planning a 3 week, self-supported trip in April to cycle from Jacksonville FL to New Orleans LA during the spring bird migration. This will be a new style for cycling for me and true merger of my passion for cycling and for bird photography. The idea is to photograph birds for a couple of hours around sunrise, pack up and cycle to somewhere new, do a bit more photography around sunset, blog, sleep, and repeat. I will also mix in a number of rest days in bird friendly locations.

Glacier Bay - Alaska - June 1993

In early June, I have signed up for a 1 week cycling tour in Alaska. I expect that I will add some time before the start of the trip for some bird photography in Alaska since there are many species of birds that would be difficult or essentially impossible to find in the lower 48 states.

Harrisonburg, Virginia - October 2024

Finally, I have rough plans for another self-supported cycling and bird photography trip in October, a round trip from Cape May NJ to Chincoteague VA during the fall bird migration.

I look forward to 2025 with excitement and curiosity.