Book View Cafe published Breaking Waves, a benefit anthology for the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund. Everything was donated — all the stories, artwork, editing, layout, hosting. The list of contributors is extraordinary, one I’m proud to be among, though my heart breaks at what human activity has done to the Gulf of Mexico, a wonder of nature.

I contributed a story first published in the science journal Nature, in its futures column: “A Modest Proposal for the Perfection of Nature,” and I also wrote a memoir, “Paradise,” of the time my family spent on Sanibel Island in the early 1950s when I was a pup. My sister, Carolyn McIntyre, was too young to remember those visits, but she returned there a year ago. An extraordinary photographer, she kindly donated the use of some of her Sanibel pictures. I had a hard time choosing which ones to include in the memoir, so with her permission I’m taking the liberty of displaying more of them here.

When I was there, in the early 1950s, the Roseate Spoonbill was a very rare bird. If someone saw a spoonbill, the news went around the island with amazing speed, considering almost nobody had a telephone. Now, having been protected for more than a half-century, they’ve made a comeback:

More birds:

Sanibel is known for shell collecting….

and beaches:

— VNM

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Vonda N. McIntyre is a founding member of Book View Cafe. She is a contributor to Breaking Waves, a benefit anthology for the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Fund.