Nature Blog Network

Another popular and personable blogger, Florida Cracker, joins us this week to talk about the nature blogosphere and his part in it, Pure Florida. FC, as he is known to his regular readers, was a National Park Service Ranger working in both law enforcement and interpretation for some eight years. At the time, he thought he wouldn’t mind leaving Florida to pursue a career, but was wrong about that. As a result, he changed careers to teaching and put down roots in the most rural part of Florida he could find.

Why do you blog?
Pure Florida is an outlet for my love of the real Florida, its nature and its traditional cultures. My Florida roots go back into the mid 1700′s and I truly love this unique piece of the Earth.

It’s a bit of a conflict sometimes, as I am constantly expounding on the beauty of Florida, but I really don’t want anyone else to move here. Florida is quite full, thank you very much. You are welcome to visit, but please go home. I wrestle with that sometimes, but I can’t help sharing the wonders of this peninsula.

What’s the best thing about blogging?
The best thing about blogging is the interaction and relationships you achieve with so many fascinating people. I keep Pure Florida apolitical so I get a real mix of commenters and visitors and we all seem to get along just fine. That doesn’t mean I don’t rant on issues occasionally, but I stick to the issues and avoid party rhetoric when I do.

How did you pick the name of your blog?
I came up with the name Pure Florida independently and only later discovered that a Florida county uses the same name for their chamber of commerce website. I chose the name because Florida is my sole focus.

As for my nom de plume, I chose “Florida Cracker” as a symbol of my area of Florida.  The original Florida Crackers were tough settlers who farmed and raised “cracker cattle” on the wild Florida frontier. They lived difficult, mostly dirt poor lives in an unforgiving land. My still very wild and rural part of Florida is essentially the last frontier in a state woefully overdeveloped and so I feel a connection to those Crackers of old, and with a family history here in Florida that starts in 1767, I am very much their descendant. I created my trademark Florida Cracker symbol out of saltine crackers one day at lunch to add a bit of whimsy … a reminder to not take myself too seriously.

Over time, my readers have shortened it to “FC” in the comment section and that is just fine with me.

What’s unique or different about your blog?
I don’t know if there is anything unique about Pure Florida, except for the general wackiness of the author.

Yours is among the most popular blogs on NBN. To what do you attribute your popularity?
I do try to work in humor along the way … there are some pretty seriously dry blogs out there and I don’t want Pure Florida to be just another handwringing, “all is lost” environmental site. It is a nature blog primarily, but I break that up with tales about my 3 kids, the teaching life, and that insane labrador puppy, Bear. I do not take myself too seriously, hence the series of posts in the category, Stupid Things I Have Done.

Any comments on being part of the nature blogger community?
I love being part of the nature blogging community. The views into other regions through the eyes of the people who live there is a wonder and such a learning experience.

Has blogging changed how you think about nature — or anything else?
Blogging has changed my life in a number of ways. I regularly communicate with people who I never would have “met” without this medium. As a daily poster, blogging has become a passion that is always present. The thought, ” I could blog that …” pops into my head so often that my wife will sometimes turn to me and ask, ” Are you blogging in your head right now?”

Blogging has really improved my wildlife photography skills which I had let go dormant during the hectic days of raising 3 babies. Before I was married, I freelanced articles to magazines about Florida wildlife, but I let that go when the kids came along. Now I run my own “magazine” in Pure Florida.

Any words of wisdom for new nature bloggers?
First, get out there. Go adventuring and take zillions of photos. Only blog the good ones.

Second, post daily if you want lots of great folks to visit your site and read your stuff. My readers tell me they like knowing there will always be something new at Pure Florida each day. My goal is to never let them down.

Thank you, FC, for taking us behind the scenes of Pure Florida.

To sample some of Pure Florida and see why we love it so much, check out these posts:

• Stupid Things I Have Done: Part One Of A Long Series: The Hornet Nest
• Squirrel On The Half Smell
• Snaeggke
• Hang Time