Kathleen Dean Moore

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.

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

"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

"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