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red First says he’s been a closet “hydro-vehicular” writer much of his life—telling himself stories
and enjoying the sound and feel of language—in the shower and when driving alone in the car. He
“went public” with his writing in 2002.

That year, at 54, burned out on his second career (in health care, his first in education) he began to explore
the “where” of his life in words—in a weblog he called Fragments from Floyd. (The blog remains active to
date!) In that photo-blog he discovered the joy of compositions of language, a welcomed complement to his
creative work with light as a digital photographer. His writings online lead to NPR radio essays, regular news-
paper columns and two books of non-fiction.

Fred is an Alabama native and graduate of Auburn University (MS Zoology 1973) and the U of ALA at
B’ham (MS in Physical Therapy 1989). He and his wife Ann “discovered” Virginia in 1975 and spent 12 years in Wytheville where Fred
taught general biology, field botany and other related courses. They returned to Floyd County VA in 1997.

He has been active at the Mt Rogers Naturalist Rally, leading his first wildflower field trip there in 1975. His writing often turns to sense of
place and to our relationships with the landscapes of our lives, the natural “oikos” where we live in the same house in more or less harmony
with our non-human neighbors. Fred is a member of the Society of Environmental Journalists, and is on the Board of Directors for Sus-
tainFloyd, and otherwise active in stewardship endeavors locally. Since 2002, he has returned part time to clinical practice and to adjunct
faculty teaching at Radford University. He lives in a remote creek valley in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwest Virginia in a century-old
house—and home—to which he and his wife have been moving all their lives.

Slow Road Home: a Blue Ridge Book of Days
took shape in 2006, the narrative arising from a
year of solitude in a remote Floyd County (VA)
landscape. There, the rhythms of the seasons soon
replaced the fast pace of his professional life-on-
hold. In more than 100 vignettes and a few longer
stories First explores “sense of place” and rela-
tionships with nature, culture and one cold creek
valley he calls home. The book bears the tension
of that uncertain year cast off from the familiar
routine of work. But more, it celebrates with great
care and reverence the beautiful ordinary just be-
yond our door—a world that becomes visible
when we slow down and rediscover a child-like
curiosity, awe and wonder
Fred’s photographic endeavors include his blog, Fragments from Floyd, that has of-
fered more than 1000 images to viewers and readers over the years, often accompanied
by the story behind the picture—or the one that came from the image once it was cap-
tured for closer observation and study. His rural landscapes have been used widely in
regional travel and tourism packages, and have appeared in feature articles about Floyd in
Blue Ridge Country Magazine and Smith Mt. Laker. In 2008, he worked with Landscope
America (a Nature Conservancy—National Geographic collaboration) as free-lance
photographer to document a conservation easement gift in Grayson County. Thirteen
of his images were selected for use for Wordsprint’s 2009-10 calendar and one of those
images won the competition for use by the Society of Environmental Journalists in their
2010 promotional mailings. Informal galleries of Fred’s images (fred1st) can be found at
SmugMug and Flickr.

What We Hold In Our Hands: a Slow Road

Reader (2009) ranges widely across the realm of
relationships—with our families, communities
and the global order of nature—both as bless-
ings and as obligations we hold in our hands. Like
his first book, his second is in part, a “memoir
of place”, a “personal ecology” with more about
Nameless Creek, HeresHome and the non-human
neighbors he lives with. But here, First also brings
the reader into his most perplexing issues: how
much (clothes, technology and stuff) is enough?
How ought we to live so that our children’s chil-
dren can live within their means and within the
planet’s capacities to rebound? With good humor
and an easy style, the author elevates the simple,
ordinary and local in a way that will bring a smile,
a raised eyebrow, or nod of affirmation.