Simply put, the 114-mile drive from the picturesque Austrian city of Villach to the Italian harbor town of Grado — by way of Slovenia’s Soča River Valley — is a photographer’s grail, especially if the itinerary is set by a master photographer.

I made the journey in the fall of 2023 with one such escort, my Berliner friend Thomas, whose photo stops started at Italy’s Predil Lake and Predil Pass Battery in the Alps; passed through the Slovenian villages of Bovec, Kanal, Dobrovo, and Medana in mountain and wine country; and ended at Southern Italy’s Palmanova, Aquileia, and Grado on the Adriatic Sea.

The region’s imagery and history left me in awe.

Leticia has occupied a magical place in my imagination for two thirds of my life – hard as that may be to believe.

Colombia’s only port city on the Amazon River is neither famous nor glamourous. It has a population of 33,000 and occupies the northern third of a two-city complex with Tabatinga, Brazil.

Much of Leticia’s charm lies in its status as Colombia’s entryway to South America’s Upper Amazon River, a photographic destination I’ve imagined for a half century.

Exploring the Austrian Alps wasn’t a goal that ever made my bucket list. Neither was traveling through Europe, for that matter.

No, my wanderlust has always been inspired by indigenous cultures. But while Europe didn’t make the list, neither did it appear on my never list. My ancestry traces to 16th Century Europe and, if given an opportunity or a reason, I would obviously jump at the chance,

Both appeared in Spring 2023, when my Colombian friends Estela, Luz, and Patricia, whom I hadn’t seen since 1976, contacted me. They now live in Austria and Spain and invited me to visit.

I’ve viewed the world and recorded my life’s travels in 35mm rectangles my entire adult life, from a boatman’s view of the Hoosier National Forest in my 20s to the same waterborne perspective of the Amazon Rainforest in my 70s.

So any “retrospective” of my life’s work, as I’ve described the purpose of StevenHiggs.com, will feature a heavy dose of photographs and words from my travels, beginning with my latest from the Alps to the Adriatic Sea to the Upper Amazon River.

This blog’s headline was the original title for our upcoming coffee table book planned for release this fall.

But as the project’s epic scale became apparent, the name evolved into Andy Mahler and the Hoosier National: The Folk Hero and the Forest He Loves.

So Andy’s stand against U.S. Forest Service plans to log, burn, and chemically spray 30,000 acres of the Hoosier’s Orange County woods called Buffalo Springs — in the name of ecological restoration no less — became the book’s final chapter.

… I’m a man of words as well, and I’ve gotten pretty used to memorializing friends who have passed – Charlotte, James Alexander Thom, even Ken Nunn, who once sent a note calling me an “old friend.” I wrote a book about Andy Mahler and left his bedside just a few hours before he passed.

But when I learned the news on the morning of Jan. 6, all I could muster for our mutual Facebook Friends was:

“Sorry folks. But I just learned that Carp Combs passed this morning. This is a hard one.”

As the About page explains, I cannot say exactly what this website will be, aside from serving as a repository for my ongoing, half century of work as an environmental photographer and journalist based in Southern Indiana’s Hoosier National Forest country.

But there will be a heavy emphasis on the Hoosier National, which I began exploring, photographing, and writing about exactly 50 years ago.