Dozens of domestic rabbits roam through one San Jose neighborhood each night. They emerge at dusk, appearing on lawns and gardens and munching on rose and hibiscus flowers. Without intervention, just a couple of abandoned pet rabbits can quickly form colonies numbering in the hundreds.

Latifat Apatira is a botanical nature printmaker based in the Bay Area. As a physician who nearly became a botanist, the power of her creativity lies at the intersection of her passions and identities. Describing herself first as a Muslim-woman, this identity punctuates all the others: artist, daughter, sister, Nigerian-American, educator, plant person, and botanical activist. The many themes that make up her life’s work—faith and spirituality, the rich history of nature printing, botany, ethnobotany, and art—come together to form the whole of her creative work.

Around 9:00 p.m. during falcon fledging season, Craig Nikitas got a call from the San Francisco Fire Department asking him to come to Fire Station 35 on the pier. When he arrived, firefighters handed him a soaking-wet peregrine falcon fledgling in a box. She had been found grounded along the Embarcadero.

Waking up every two hours to feed an orphaned newborn bat pup, providing emergency maternal care for a hoary bat giving birth to breech twins, or grooming sleek bat fur with a mascara brush are all routine parts of life for JoEllen Arnold, a retired teacher, who is a bat "rehabber," and conservation advocate.

It's a typical summer morning at the lagoon. The air is filled with a strange dinosaur-like soundtrack as the continuous sound of babbling and squawking travels across the water. It's nesting season for a co-mingled flock of snowy and great egrets who have taken over several Monterey pine trees at the water's edge. Beneath the trees, Cindy Margulis is checking on the birds. 

Bianca Ana Chavez is a botanical artist living and working in Japan. She grew up in the Monterey County countryside surrounded by six acres of chaparral and a kitchen garden.

Being still is one of my favorite ways to be in the forest.