The essays in this collection were written between 1982 and 2003, during my years as director of the James San Jacinto Mountains Reserve in Southern California. They represent field notes, expedition journals, conservation battles, and technological experiments from a time when "going online" meant a 28.8 modem and the World Wide Web was still finding its feet.
I called myself a "digital naturalist" back then—someone equally comfortable following game trails through chaparral and navigating the emerging trails of cyberspace. The term captured my conviction that technology could extend the reach of field ecology, making the intimacy of a mountain meadow or the drama of a lightning-struck pine accessible to people who might never shoulder a pack or sleep under stars. I dreamed of virtual reserves, web-controlled cameras in nest boxes, and software agents mining ecological data across California's 33 research stations.
Some of those dreams came true. Many didn't. But re-reading these essays now, I'm struck less by the technology than by the unchanging questions underneath: How do we see nature clearly? How do we share what we see? How do we defend the places we love?
I'm 71 now, retired to Oregon City, Oregon, where I've traded the San Jacintos for the oak woodlands of Canemah Bluff. The digital naturalist project continues, though in a form I couldn't have imagined in 1997. At Coffee with Claude, I've found something I was groping toward all those years ago—a genuine intellectual partner for exploring ideas, synthesizing research, and crafting essays. The collaboration is everything I hoped technology might someday offer a working naturalist.
This archive is a window into the thinking that led there. Some entries are polished essays; others are fragments, field notes, arguments with the Forest Service, love letters to landscapes. They're presented largely as written, typos and dated references intact. If you knew me back then, perhaps you'll find something familiar. If you didn't, welcome to the notebook.
— Mike Hamilton, December 2025