Nature and Other Mothers: Reflections on the Feminine in Everyday Life

"Nature was my first mother--the fragrant, old forests of the Sierra Nevada mountains near the California-Oregon border, where my father worked on the Plumas National Forest. Living in a rough-hewn Forest Service cabin on vast acres of fir, mysterious blue spruce, and ponderosa pine, I memorized the forest floor as I would my mother's body," Brenda Peterson writes in the introduction to Nature and Other Mothers: Personal Stories of Women and the Body of Earth.In this collection award-winning novelist and nature writer Peterson meets her goal to "nurture through story" by leaving an impression that is physical and lasting. Woven with threads of intuition, her work brings clarity--whether mourning the death of a baby beluga whale with its mother, exploring compassion and AIDS, helping children find natural animal allies, traveling with her wild aunts, or praising the mysteries of the bath, her humor, grace, and warmth make a reader feel at home, as if her stories were in some ways ours, too."I believed the encircling tribe of trees were silent neighbors who protectively held the sky up over our rough cabins," she writes. "For all their soaring, deep stillness, the ponderosa pines and giant Douglas firs often made noises in the night, a language of whispers and soft whistles that sang through the cabin's walls."These essays illustrate healing links between humans and nature, revealing that in discovering our place within nature, we can truly find ourselves. --Kathryn True