It all started when I noticed that the map of Mobile Bay sold at the Lyons Share in Fairhope had become somewhat antiquated since 1950-1971. This map by Marian Francis Acker MacPherson is a beloved piece of memorabilia gracing many area walls.

My love, and sometimes I think my curse, is detail. Ironically I admire the casual loose style of impressionist art because it is so opposite of what I do. Furthermore, having grown up on boats and spent much of my life around them, I am attracted to charts, maps or anything related. Perhaps my travels on the water from a young age helped develop my insatiable curiosity for all that surrounds me.

Meeting a Fairhope local, Tom, while in my home of Venice, Fla., is the very reason my eyes were opened to a part of the world I had never experienced. Tom is down-right romantic about Baldwin County. I could never have been introduced to such unique area by a better person.

As my tour began, I learned quickly that the “Four Way” (Greeno Road at Highway 98) was something I would need to negotiate on my own because we only traveled back roads together. I have twisted and turned down every red clay or county road you can imagine. I believe that “not being from here” awarded me the opportunity to come in to this project with an objective, fresh eye.

Listed are just a few of our adventures: Fox Squirrel viewing on Higbee Road, collecting wood from Gaillard Island, Henry Stuart's round house, exploring the waterways of Bayou La Batre with its marvelous, rusty old nautical “stuff,” frolicking through blooming cotton, collecting pottery chards from Montrose, watching original Mobile Bricks being split in West Mobile, studying a fly in a Pitcher Plant at the bog, walking through the old kiln areas in Clay City, enjoying fried mullet backs, looking for Civil War relics in the dunes outside Fort Morgan (before seeing the sign that disallows that practice now), touring an amazing tug boat at the State Docks, witnessing jubilees, seeing Bruce Larsen and Stig Marcussen’s artwork at Thomas Hospital, meeting old Bay shrimpers like “Fats” and experiencing the beautiful Delta. And all that is before I started this project.

Creating a new map was a perfect fit for me because I have now become romantic about south Coastal Alabama and all of its diversity. Particularly inspiring for me, is where we live on Fly Creek. My studio is in an old paddle wheel boat named Pleasure Bay. She has a history of her own.

While working on the map these past months, countless boats of every variety float before my view. Alligators, creek birds and turtles delight me every day. Many times when I wondered about a particular shape or color of an element I was rendering, I simply gazed out the window.

I worried over being correct when it came to our early indigenous inhabitants. My son had recently studied Alabama history; the books list the Indians we all know, like the Creek, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Choctaw, Muskogee and many others that migrated here. In the end, I deferred to Donnie Barrett, our Fairhope Museum curator and Fairhope Tea Plantation Owner. Hence my reference to the Mississipian Period you will see on the upper left corner of my map.

I had the opportunity to paint two crab forms for Jumpin Jubilee (Copa Public art event) last year in Fairhope. One of my crabs was titled “Steamer Crab” it featured some of the steam ship history on the bay in the early 1900s. Thanks to Tom's mother Dot Yeager, a native with great reference materials, and our history museum I learned quite a bit about that period on the bay. Alabama is the fifth most biologically diverse state in the U.S.

Plus the many devoted environmental groups that work tirelessly to preserve and improve our waters and land here, impress me to no end. I have tried to include some of them, but alas, there are many I could not. I pray at least one person will look up one of the organizations I have illustrated on my map and learn, donate or volunteer. My heart is grateful for all they do.

With the help of Kathleen at Optera and her computer graphic skills and Dan Therrell, my website guru and more, my pictorial map of the Delta is underway and soon to be followed by Orange Beach. If you have any interesting tidbits that you think would illustrate well about the Delta, please contact me through my website, MobileBayMap.com. Maps are available for purchase on the site or at Lyons Share in Fairhope, Ashland Gallery, Beinville Books and Urban Emporium in Mobile. The cost is $40 and they are approximately 17-by-22.