“What I’ve noticed being in nature, especially being alone, is that nature is like this mirror — an enormous mirror. You can’t help but see yourself, your tiny piece of it. Your insignificance.” ~ Stephen Collector

Photographer and writer Stephen Collector’s career has been an exercise in curiosity and sustained attention. A lifetime of being outside, looking closely at landscapes, animals, and people, noticing what others walk past.

His new book, No Do-Overs in Paradise: Journeys Through Wild Places and Inner Landscapes, combines his stunning photographs with outdoor adventure stories, meditations on skill and craft — and the lessons we learn from pursuing our passions and finding our people.

Curiosity, in practice.

We have to be careful not to put labels on ourselves, because they’re enormously limiting. And we do it because we’re afraid.

True to his outdoors instincts, Stephen and I explored! We talked about seizing the moment and staying in it, grounding practices that keep our hearts open, honing and appreciating skills and craft, being spoiled as a journalist paid for doing what he loves, nature as a mirror on ourselves and exploring those inner landscapes, how valuable journals can become, that we certainly can teach old dogs new tricks — and riding the edge between accepting reality and feeling gratitude.

Listen to Ep. #344: No Do-Overs in Paradise, with Stephen Collector

Check out Stephen Collector’s beautiful photographs.

Enjoy Stephen’s collection of stories and photographs in his new book No Do-Overs in Paradise: Journeys Through Wild Places and Inner Landscapes.

If you like to follow other people’s favorite writers, here’s a place to start. Stephen mentioned writers Jim Fergus and Jim Harrison several times.

I’m a fan of Ice Cube Press, which Publishers Weekly once described as “offering titles geared toward exploring curiosity”. 😉 Publisher Steve Semken also brought me Curiosity & The Essential Question of News, with Art Cullen.

If you like thinking about photography and ways of seeing, try these C2BC Classics: Point of View, with Photographer Jason Horowitz; Seeing Like a Location Scout, with Aaron Hurvitz; Seeing & Being Seen, with Humanitarian Photographer Lisa Kristine; & Meeting People Where They Are, with Andy Isaacson.

Theme music by Sean Balick. “Idle Way” by Duck Lake, via Blue Dot Sessions.

You can subscribe to Choose to Be Curious on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.