Linda Lee Rathbun
Natural Wanders....
exploring the natural world through writing

About Linda

I grew up under the influence of a restless mother, living in California, Mexico, Spain, Switzerland, the Caribbean, Florida, and Washington. Without realizing it, I married an equally restless man. As a young woman of 25, I moved to Australia with my new husband, Steve. No matter where we went on weekends and holidays, Steve had a camera with him. We were always diving, or camping, or hiking, or touring. Australia offered an endless choice of places to visit and animals to see.

With a background in psychology, I first worked as a child-therapist. I had always wanted to be a writer, but I lacked the confidence to pursue that interest. At a dive festival in Melbourne, I met the publisher of a diving magazine. Steve and I were telling him about the annual school trips we conducted to the Great Barrier Reef, and he asked me to write a story about it. After that I was hooked, and despite the usual setbacks and rejections that every writer faces, I kept writing. Over two hundred articles later, along with a couple of novels and a travel book, I am still in love with writing. No matter what the magazine assignment, I have always had my own photographer on hand. From underwater pictures, to scenics, to flowers, to people, Steve has shot photos for almost every story I have written.

Though I always lived in beautiful places, I was not conscious of nature being important to me until I saw it through Steve’s eyes. Over the years, it has become a central influence and interest to me. I now try to focus my writing on nature-travel, natural history, and environmental issues. I hope that by opening a reader’s heart to the world around them, they too will want to preserve it.

I always say that pictures accompany a story, while Steve claims that a story accompanies the pictures! In any case, I cannot argue that images have a huge impact on people. I believe that nature photographers have done more to preserve the natural world than any other group. I believe that the two most important things we can do as a society is to tend to the environment and to educate children. To this end, Steve and I have created and published a line of motivational posters for teachers to use in their classrooms.

We have been based in Florida for the last ten years, but we will be returning to Australia this year to work and travel for an indefinate period of time.

Thank you for visiting Natural Wanders.
Linda Lee Rathbun