A quarter of a century ago, Tracy quietly
hatched in a nest of sea oats amid sand dunes. Naturally she headed away from
the lights, since that was instinctive to her species, and ended up adrift
on the Gulf of Mexico until she floated ashore in the magical land of Clearwater.
Herring gulls wisked her away and substituted her for a homo sapiens infant
lying on a blanket on the shore. A family of humans failed to notice the change
and raised her as one of their own. The clumsiness of her herring gull transport
caused her to be splashed about by the ocean waves, and saltwater on her wings
led to atrophy and grounded her for many years. But her inner nature defeated
any attempt to indoctrinate her into the real world and turned her toward
the myths and legends of her Celtic heritage and her mystical inheritance.
Tracy was never able to accept and understand the human preoccupation with
materialism and with warfare. On the other hand, she quickly noted an innate
connection with fireflies and herbivorous bats that fluttered through the
night, and she was drawn to people who approach life as a game and to nature
as the mother that must be protected. And where ever she went, she was able
to recognize those who had been gifted with the inner light of imagination
and those who held a distant memory of the mystical world. Through the magic
of her lens, she could restore them to that world. That is her quest, and
where ever she wanders, she finds the mystical fair folk and brings them to
life once again.