Kathleen Dean Moore

In an effort to make sense of the deaths in quick succession of several loved ones, Kathleen Dean Moore turned to the comfort of the wild, making a series of solitary excursions into ancient forests, wild rivers, remote deserts, and windswept islands to learn what the environment could teach her in her time of pain. This book is the record of her experience. It’s a stunning collection of carefully observed accounts of her life—tracking otters on the beach, cooking breakfast in the desert, canoeing in a snow squall, wading among migrating salmon in the dark—but it is also a profound meditation on the healing power of nature. In the wonder of the rush of water over rocks, in the joy over the sight of a cougar in a cow field, Moore finds the solace that comes from connection to the natural world, and from that astonishingly intimate connection arise hope and courage, healing and gratitude. Moore is a respected and important figure among contemporary literary naturalists. Her precise and satisfying prose is a vehicle for evoking the deeper meaning of nature in our lives. “The Earth holds every possibility inside it,” she writes, “and the mystery of transformation, one thing to another. This is the wildest comfort.”

Reviews of Wild Comfort

“Wild Comfort is a richly poetic book, tipsy with life, and Moore a wonderful guide to the wilderness and our own wildness. It’s a book brimming with wonder, sorrow, happiness, and the intricate designs of nature that can surprise and sustain us all.”—Diane Ackerman, author of The Zookeeper’s Wife

“Kathleen Dean Moore is a writer whose senses, heart, generosity, and intellect open in every direction. This book, filled with knowledge of the natural and human worlds, is a superb naturalist’s handbook. It is also a praise book: an illuminated manuscript whose life overspills its own borders. In its grounded wisdoms, humility, curiosity, and in the kaleidoscope beauty of its descriptions, Wild Comfort reminds how to see, how to sing; how to welcome, with equal gravity and grace, whatever asks entrance into our lives. It is destined to become a classic.”—Jane Hirshfield

In these twenty elegant and provocative essays, Moore invites us to travel the West with her, and often with her family, as she rafts down rapids, hikes through dunes, camps in the desert, and walks along riverbanks. All along the way, she shares her remarkable observations about the life—both human and otherwise—that is sustained by rivers. Moore ponders love, loss, motherhood, happiness, evolution, and country music with ease and acuity.

Moore is a philosopher by training and a naturalist by sentiment. The way in which she sees the world and way in which she gracefully imparts how she sees it, is a mixture of both disciplines: part keen analysis, part sumptuous embrace, of all that she sees, hears, and feels in the moving water of rivers and of memory. The result is Riverwalking, a collection that is enlightening, moving, and brilliantly conceived. (Publisher’s description)"A smart, compassionate, and wise meditation on living in place." -- Terry Tempest Williams

These essays by Viola Cordova are something this world has not seen before: from a person who grew up nourished by Apache wisdom and worldviews, a powerful critique of European-Christian thought. From a person trained as a scholar of European thought in the analytic and classical traditions of an American Ph.D. program, a brilliant statement of a Native American’s philosophy. From a woman writer who knows firsthand what it means to be excluded and embraced, a moving, life-changing account of what she most deeply believes is true. What is the world? What is a human being? What is the role of a human in the world? The book ends with a coda in which Dr. Cordova addresses perhaps the hardest question of all — how, then, shall I live? Her answer is simple and complex, beautiful and burdensome: The greatest duty, if it can be so called, of a human being is to cause no disruption to the greater, and beautiful, whole of what it is that is.

“This book has the potential to change the guiding assumptions for viewing indigenous thought in Western philosophy. I consider it a seminal work that will make a lasting and essential contribution to indigenous studies.” -- Gregory Cajete, University of New Mexico

As it erupted in 1980, Mount St. Helens captured the attention of the region, nation, and world, and it continues to fascinate today – a constant reminder that we live in volcano country. In lucid prose and poetry by some of America’s leading writers and scientists, In the Blast Zone explores this story of destruction and renewal in all its human, geological, and ecological dimensions.

The contributors to this volume camped together on Mount St. Helens for four days, hiking, observing, and sharing ideas. They asked the question, What can this radically altered landscape tell us about nature and how to live our lives? In the Blast Zone collects their answers. While introducing ecological and geological insights, it also tells compelling stories about how science and literature inform our lives and our relation to nature. These writings will startle readers with new recognition of the mountain’s matchless gifts of beauty, illumination, and hope. Contributors: Jerry Franklin, Ursula LeGuin, Scott Russell Sanders, Gary Snyder, Ann Zwinger, and many more.