Welcome to Enchanted Habitat. This is a celebration of nature in central Arkansas, my lifelong home. I want to tell what is here, using visual art, word art, and interesting facts. The plants and animals here are usually taken for granted. Actually they are intriguing. The ugly ones are pleasing to an eye that loves them, and the beautiful ones are often gorgeous. The place has seasonal moods. The people are interesting. The weather can be astonishing. Beautiful landscapes are everywhere I look. This blog is a work of love.

I’m a writer, artist, and lover of nature, especially in this special place on Earth where I was born and have lived my life. I didn’t always know to honor this part of Creation that is my birthright, my home, and my family of the soul. But now my daily interactions with this seemingly ordinary world I live in are at the top of what is important to me.

See also my website ruthbyrn.com if you are interested in my art (painting, sketches, and other), poetry, and writing. I am also a novelist and my book, Fourth and Victory, is available at Amazon.

We live in a time when capitalism and conservativism have joined together as a seemingly irresistible force that is destroying ecology. The exploitation of the earth  is widely viewed as the divinely ordained right of man, and inevitable, and therefore a good goal on a mass scale. I believe that the consequent disruption and destruction of the earth is bringing us near the brink of catastrophe, if not extinction, for all creatures including humans. I want to do my part and take effective action to help turn the situation around. I think that speaking out one’s experienced-based beliefs is an important political act. I hope portraying nature and its creatures through the lens of my personal experience will be a valid action. This blog is one way of promulgating the value of nature including especially the “ordinary” creatures that so often go unnoticed, or unseen, or are generally dismissed as too common to be remarkable. There is no such thing as an unremarkable creature. Every creature is a marvel if you take a good look at it.