Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World

Finely crafted essays that link personal experience with expert observations. -Booklist

Reminiscent of the work of Annie Dillard . . . this collection of twenty-one lyrical essays intently probes the ways we are bound to our planet and to one another. -Publishers Weekly

Graceful meditations on nature . . . an altogether satisfying collection by a gifted interpreter of the natural world. -Kirkus Reviews

With the finely honed skills of an essayist, the heightened sensibility of a naturalist, and the carefully reasoned mind of a philosopher, Kathleen Dean Moore examines our connections to what we hold most dear. In a quest for the metaphorical holdfast-the structure at the end of seaweed strands that attach to rocks with a grip that even ocean gales cannot rend-Moore seeks to understand that which affixes her firmly to family and place.

In twenty-one elegant, probing essays, she meditates on connection and separation: the sense of brotherhood fostered by communal wolf howls; the inevitability of losing our children to their own lives; her own mischievousness as she takes candy from her unwitting students on Halloween; the sublimity of life and longing in the creatures of the sea; her agonizing decision when facing her father's death. She is joyous, playful, and mournful. As Moore travels geographically (from the Oregon shores to Alaska) and philosophically, she leaves no doubt of her virtuosity and range.