Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature [Paperback]

Kathleen Dean Moore (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 9, 2010

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 experiences. 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.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“This marvelous and sense-luscious collection of essays demonstrates Moore's distinctive style which is rich in descriptive passages and deep musings.”—Spirituality & Practice

“Nature writing at its most lyrical.”—Shambhala Sun

“Moore recounts with descriptive poignancy how moonlight rides the waves toward shore; how a rubber boa relaxes and comes alive in the warmth of the human hand; how it can feel to sit in the sun, savoring the air with a sense that is not quite smell, not quite taste, but something in between. [Wild Comfort] is an invitation to us to experience our own belonging.”—Yes! magazine

“Introspectives looking for nature writing in the vein of Rachel Carson or Annie Dillard will appreciate Wild Comfort, not only for its sensual imagery, but also for its informative and encouraging tone. Moore’s impeccable attention to detail and vivid descriptions invoking all five senses are constant.”—ForeWord Reviews

“With attention to the smallest details of the natural world, this very personal book unites our emotional world with the world that surrounds us.”—Sierra Club’s blog The Green Life

"This slender collection of essays moves as powerfully and inevitably as a tide. Wild Comfort may be rooted in grief, in loss, in darkness, but Moore 's words carry us inexorably toward light and hope."— Story Circle Book Reviews

“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

“What nature gives, it takes away. Kathleen Dean Moore feels the ache of this truth in her bones. And yet in spite of grieving over the death of friends, the extinction of species, and the tattering of Earth's web, she finds comfort in natural and human creations, in symphonies and snakes, in science and stars, in the beauty constantly upwelling from the mystery we call life. This book itself is such a consoling creation, a cause for gratitude and joy.”—Scott Russell Sanders, author of A Private History of Awe

“Moore’s descriptions are powerfully visceral. Readers will find that the world seems larger, wilder, and yet safer than they had thought—more beautiful and more like home.”—Book Page

“This collection of essays, reveries, and meditations interweaves keen observations of the natural world with descriptions of wilderness travel, conversations, stories, and philosophical musings.  It is easy to imagine Moore lying next to Plato, intensely focused and observant, pointing out the natural world’s soothing and transformative miracles.  She excels at it.”—The Oregonian

“ Moore turns over rocks and describes what she finds—even if, like a seething mass of snakes, it lacks traditional beauty.  This makes her experiences with nature extremely readable.”—The Southwest Portland Post

"Good writers, like good friends, are equal parts familiarity and surprise, giving us, upon each encounter, both the pleasure of routine and the promise of something new. Such a writer is Kathleen Dean Moore.  Moore has a nice way of shaking us awake by turning convention on its ear.”—The Advocate

About the Author

Kathleen Dean Moore lives in Oregon, at the confluence of two rivers, and, during the summer months, she resides in a little cabin at the edge of a southeast Alaskan inlet. As an essayist, activist, and professor, she brings together natural history, philosophical ideas, and creative expression in a search for loving ways to live on the earth. She has published three books of personal essays about living in the lively places where water meets land: Riverwalking, Holdfast, and The Pine Island Paradox. Her essays can be found in many journals, including Audubon, Discover, Orion, and the New York Times Magazine. Moore is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Oregon State, where she teaches courses on environmental thought and ethics. She is also the cofounder and director of Oregon State’s Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Trumpeter (March 9, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590307712
• ISBN-13: 978-1590307717
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #132,109 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #40 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Animal Care & Pets > Pet Loss
  • #52 in Books > Science & Math > Nature & Ecology > Natural History

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Navigating the Flow From Grief to Gladness, May 17, 2010

By 

Story Circle Book Reviews - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature (Paperback)

I have to confess up front: I was afraid to read this book. Not because I don't know and love Moore's thinking and writing; I do. Her essay, "Testimony of the Marsh," from her book Holdfast is one of my favorites ever. I teach it in my creative writing workshops as an example of how to use lyrical nature writing to reveal truths at the heart of life. So I picked up Wild Comfort in delighted anticipation, until I read this in her introduction:

I had set out to write a different book. I had begun to write about happiness... But events overtook me. I guess that's how I'll say it. That autumn, events overtook me, death after death, and my life became an experiment in sadness.

I couldn't read more. I closed the book. For the past eight months, since my husband began seeing birds and was eventually diagnosed with brain cancer, my life has been an experiment in sustaining courage and balance. I didn't want to read about grief, sadness or any of their relatives. I wanted that book on what makes a person happy.

A few days later, I picked up Wild Comfort again. And reading on, I drank it in like a healing draught, like the smell of rain bringing life to my drought-stricken desert valley. This slender collection of essays moves as powerfully and inevitably as a tide, inching in, rising ever-so-slowly under me, until I am buoyed by the strength and truth that flow through Moore's words. It is like the sun shining through a gap in the clouds, spotlighting the exact place that makes us stop and stare, overcome with awe at how beautiful life is. Wild Comfort may be rooted in grief, in loss, in darkness, but Moore's words carry us inexorably toward light and hope.

I could quote an insightful passage from every essay, but here's the paragraph from the beginning of the book that hooked me:

Late on the night when I finished this book, I felt my way to the edge of the Pacific Ocean. Clouds obscured the moon. I could hear the shifting of the dark sea but could only imagine the surge and ebb of its rim on the sand. Then the clouds slid out from under the moon. The advancing edge of waves gathered moonlight and pushed it toward land. The line of light wavered there, shaking in the wind, then slid out to sea. And so it was, up and down the beach, a rim of light riding in on the swash and slipping back into the night. I was happy then, standing in the surge with lines of moonlight catching on my rubber boots. This is something that needs explaining, how light emerges from darkness, how comfort wells up from sorrow. The Earth holds every possibility inside it, and the mystery of transformation, one thing into another. This is the wildest comfort.

Amen.

by Susan J. Tweit
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lyrical, Lively, and Lovely, April 3, 2010

By 

Janet Mallot (Jacksonville, FL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature (Paperback)

Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature reflects moments and experiences in the author's life in the wild through lucid, poetic descriptions that comfortably sway between the most minute details and broad universal truths. Her attentiveness to the facts of the moment at hand is keen, while her thoughts in understanding them may be scientific, ethical, or purely exhilarating...and sometimes all of these. Her appreciation and gratitude for the wild are genuine and contagious. She is a full participant...physical, emotional, and in her own way, spiritual...in the experiences she describes, never a bystander to them or an objective academic, although her credentials in philosophy invariably enrich her perceptions.

Moore turns to nature to nimbly and wisely yet subtly face with grace the loss of family members and friends, making choices, dealing with the complexities of modern life, and having patience, among other things. She offers lessons for us in how a heron eats, in a possum in a plum tree, in turning stones, and in a broken sun, reflecting that "[t]here is a wild comfort in the cycles and the intersecting circles, the rotations and revolutions, the growing and ebbing of this beautiful and strangely trustworthy world."

The impact of this book has been to revitalize (once again, for it is a neverending process) my own senses and mind in savoring how human life is inevitably interlaced with the wild, and that embracing and exploring that fact can only bring us closer to understanding what is true and real in both this instant and the timeless universe.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A babbling brook, November 29, 2010

By 

Elizabeth Anne "meafb" (Germany) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Wild Comfort: The Solace of Nature (Paperback)

I enjoyed this book, but I never quite finished it. It lost its zing somewhere along the way. I had been hoping to find more of the magic of what nature actually DID to give solace. Perhaps realizing that I didn't need to finish the book at all but rather go outside and take a hike was exactly what the author was getting at?