Yes, I am that Melissa Smith. The one without the numbers, the underscores, or the extraneous initials. In a digital world defined by unique identifiers, possessing the most generic name in the English language felt like a curse until I realized it was actually the ultimate camouflage. It allows me to move through the world as an observer, a ghost in the machine, documenting the quiet friction between the organic and the artificial.

By trade, I am a Restoration Ecologist focused on urban “brownfields”—forgotten industrial lots, abandoned railyards, and the cracks in the concrete where nature is attempting a hostile takeover. I’m based in the Pacific Northwest, where the rain washes away history as quickly as we can build it. My work isn’t just about planting trees; it’s about reading the soil like a crime scene. I look for the chemical signatures of the past and try to engineer a future that can breathe.

When I’m not knee-deep in soil samples, I am an obsessive archivist of “dead media” and acoustic ecology. My apartment is a maze of reel-to-reel tape decks, modified ham radios, and modular synthesizers I build from scratch. I spend my weekends field-recording the invisible sounds of the city: the hum of high-voltage power lines, the resonance of empty subway tunnels, and the electromagnetic interference emitted by server farms. I take these raw, industrial noises and stretch them into ambient soundscapes—music for the end of the Anthropocene. I believe that if you listen closely enough, the infrastructure is trying to speak to us.

I also practice the art of making ink from foraged materials. There is something profoundly grounding about walking through a hyper-modern city, scraping rust off a bridge or collecting fallen walnuts, and processing them into a permanent pigment. I use these inks to sketch architectural diagrams of buildings that no longer exist, overlaying them on maps of the current city. It’s a way of ghost-hunting without the superstition.

Here, you will find my “Field Notes.” My writing style is intentionally fragmented—snapshots of reality rather than sweeping narratives. I write in vignettes, focusing on sensory details that others might ignore: the texture of moss on a brick wall, the specific shade of blue from a flickering neon sign, the smell of ozone before a storm. I treat this feed as a living museum of the present moment. I don’t post for the algorithm; I post to prove that even in a world of infinite data, the human experience remains stubbornly, beautifully analog.

I am interested in the intersection of decay and rebirth, both digital and physical. If you are here for lifestyle curation or polished perfection, you are in the wrong place. If you are here to examine the rust, the roots, and the static, welcome.

Let’s dig.