I began actively growing CP in about 1975 (though I tried my hand several times as a kid with the 59-cent flytraps). My very first field experience was a trip to the Green Swamp in late April of '75, where I first saw Sarracenia purpurea and the huge stands of S. flava, plus a few hybrids. By 1977, I was living in Tallahassee, so the plants were literally growing on my doorstep (at the time, there were still many stands of S. flava within the city limits). I first made contact with Bob Hanrahan (WIP) and we became fast friends through our mutual love of CP. I made regular trips out to Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida panhandle.

My interest continued through the late 70s and into the early '80s, when I moved to California, but by 1984, I was back in Tallahassee. I literally would spend days in the field, from the Green Swamp all the way down to the Jacksonville, Florida area and then west into Louisiana, where I saw my first giant S. psittacina growing aquatically (a site that no longer exists). But the majority of my time was spent within a few hundred miles of Tallahassee. At that time, there were amazing stands of S. minor and psittacina south of the city, with massive colonies of hybrids near Sopchoppy and St. Marks. Sadly, these are now all gone.

Even after moving back to California (job related), I made yearly trips back to the Gulf Coast, meeting Bob Hanrahan for whirlwind four or five day tours in the field. It was in 1986, when I first began to see substantial devastation of habitats. It seemed like every trip, we would discover another favorite site had fallen to bulldozers and earthmovers, mainly for soybean and tree farming. The worst sight we ever saw was in and around the Green Swamp, where there were literally hundreds of thousands of plants that were uprooted, left to die in the hot sun. The magnitude of this
destruction still haunts me (I know that sounds melodramatic, but no words could ever express what we saw there). The Nature Conservancy stepped in at that point, but the damage was done. The Green Swamp is now a tiny fraction of its previous size. The only reminder is a small sign you pass that is posted beside the road, which declares this to be The Green Swamp, now under Nature Conservancy stewardship.

I had purchased a used Sony video camera in the 1980s and shot video on occasion, though I kept my primary focus on Kodachromes, shot with my trusty Nikon. To this day, I kick myself over missed opportunities where I should have taken the video camera into a particular site, but back then, you had a separate camera and the recorder, which hung over the shoulder. This could get
very tiresome in 100 (38C) degree weather, not to mention how many times I would get everything tangled in those nasty smilac vines.

When my job situation became unbearable in California, I decided I had to get back to Tallahassee, where I hope to eventually retire. Though I made some forays into the field in the early to mid 1990s, I was essentially working two jobs (a day job and a second as a freelance sound designer); and as I was getting older. During this time, my my spinal stenosis (a degenerative bone disease in the lower back) got worse, so I stuck close to home. I had radical surgery in late 2001 that has helped ease the pain, though it was a long, slow recovery.

With my improving health, I'm anxious to get back out into the field to start the production of my next DVD project.

Jim Miller