He was born in the summer of his 27th year
Coming home to a place he’d never been before
He left yesterday behind him, you might say he was born again
You might say he found a key for every door
John Denver – Rocky Mountain High

Danny Kimberlin grew up among the swamps and bayous of south Louisiana, an area heavily swayed by the French Acadian, or “Cajun,” culture. Such is the unique nature of this region that the locals claim you need a passport to visit and immigration is strictly frowned upon. His family owned land just outside Louisiana’s capital city of Baton Rouge, exactly nine miles down Highland Road from the “stately oaks and broad magnolias” of the L.S.U. campus. It was this blend of influences that would help shape his destiny as a physician-photographer.

Dr. K’s earliest memories are of fishing the bayous, swamps, and marshes of Louisiana’s rich coastal environment with his dad. These were places that required a topo map to navigate and even today, despite over 5000 offshore oil leases, rival Florida’s Everglades in wetland biodiversity. Every weekend was spent with fly or casting rod in hand, immersed in the sights and sounds of this backwater land of enchantment.

Eventually the sizable plot of land owned by his family, known as “the country” back then, evolved into a recreational ranch which came to house the entire family as distant neighbors. Nevertheless, there were more horses than people on this spread, and seven barns and four ponds at last count. And so it came to pass that the rod and reel were succeeded by a new and consuming passion, for horses and all that that implies. From about the age of eight until he enrolled in L.S.U. at 18, Dr. K pretty much lived and breathed the world of Highland Road Farms, surrounded by similarly passionate people, family and friends alike. This was a different world than the swamp, but it was nature, nevertheless. Huge live oak and pecan trees shaded barnyard animals and a menagerie of wild critters that had plenty of room to roam in those days. Trail rides were mixed with horse shows and rodeos, blended into the perpetual summer of south Louisiana, Disney’s “Song of the South” come to life.

And that’s pretty much the way it was until 1966, perhaps the pinnacle year of a social revolution referred to as the Sixties. For Dr. K high school graduation was followed by the daily trek down Highland Road to L.S.U. It was the end of innocence as horses gave way to pre-med and other serious things. A world of hands-on nature was supplanted by the very cerebral life of a college student and the emerging environmental movement. The latter was part of that great revolution that included hippies, anti-war (Vietnam), and civil rights. Kennedy had been killed, Peter Paul and Mary sang Blowin’ In the Wind, and we were about to land a man on the moon, as if the fires of social change needed more fuel. Out of all this energy grew a new awareness, that nature was increasingly threatened by the emerging dominance of a single species, Homo sapiens.

By 1967 the only thing left in this rite of passage story was to find an outlet of expression for all this pent up passion and concern. It came in the form of an odyssey to Tennessee. It was the summer of his nineteenth year and from that time forward things would never be the same.

On a day in June, between his freshman and sophomore years at L.S.U., Danny Kimberlin left the safety of his cocoon in Baton Rouge and drove due north for the very first time. He had no itinerary but to go places he had never been. Though he didn’t know it at the time it was to be a metamorphic journey from which there would be no return, at least in the spiritual sense. He had a new car and camera and a hankering to see new worlds, preferably of topographical diversity. He would not be disappointed. By the end of day one the flatlands of his youth had faded in the rear view mirror and the earth was beginning to buckle a bit.

On day two he meandered for hours beside a chuckling stream, somewhere between Lookout Mountain and the Great Smokies, ensconced in the blue hills and green dales of this hallelujah wonderland. The roads were gentle, wavy, of the two-lane type, the sort of tranquil byways one would wish for to be lifted from Rock City to the Pearly Gates. The conversion was underway.

The days to follow were welded seamlessly, as one peak experience was followed by another, and another. He worshipped in cathedral forests, waded clear mountain streams, and felt of cool clammy rock – all for the very first time. He hiked the trails, picked berries in balds, bagged a few peaks, and slept with stars and bears. And he snapped the shutter of his camera again and again. At the end of two weeks the transformation was complete. The swamp kid had become, and ever more would remain, a mountain man. Twenty three years later, in 1990, Dr. K would move to Tennesseee where he lives today and practices medicine and the art of adventure photography.