HOLDFAST -- AT HOME IN THE NATURAL WORLD

 THESE ESSAYS, several under different titles or in different form, appeared originally in the following:
"The Song of the Canyon Wren," Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment
"Pale Morning Dun (Ephemerella infrequens)," Southern Review
"The Prometheus Moth," Commonweal
"Traveling the Logging Road, Coast Range," WildEarth
"A Field Guide to Western Birds," California Wild
"Field Notes for an Aesthetic of Storms," Bear Essentials
"Canoeing on the Line of a Song," Canoe and Kayak

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Holdfast.  A rootlike structure, as of algae and other simple plants, for attachment to the substrate. -- Rachel Carson

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"A gifted essayist ... Moore's prose is elegant and poetic." -- Hungry Mind Review

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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.

The natural world is fertile ground to explore these vital elements and the importance of living "thickly," as she writes, plumbing the rich depths of each moment.  In twenty elegant, probing essays she meditates on connection and separation:  the sense of brotherhood fostered by communal howling; the inevitability of losing our children to their own lives.  She is joyous, playful, and mournful as she ponders the sublimity of life and longing in the creatures of the sea; the pleasures of taking candy from her unwitting students on Halloween; facing the decision to end her father's life.  She is curious and wise as she celebrates otters and chickadees, clams and kelp, and the relationship between place and memory.

From the Oregon coast she calls home to Alaskan shores, Moore travels geographically and philosophically, leaving no doubt of her virtuosity and range.

Kathleen Dean Moore is the chair of the Department of Philosophy at Oregon State Universityi, and the author of Riverwalking, her highly acclaimed first book and winner of a 1995 Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award.  Her essays have appeared in dozens of publications including The New York Times, Field & Stream, Southern Review, Northwest Review, and WildEarth.  She lives in Corvallis, Oregon.

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Jacket photograph by Denjiro Sato
Jacket design by Catherin Lau Hunt
Author photograph by James A. Folts

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"The Natural world is not just rocks and bears, it is close and familiar.  I am stoked by how HOLDFAST makes that familiarity fresh and exciting.  Kathleen Dean Moore's book negotiates between the energies of both critters and people -- coots, kelp, otters, daughters, and more.  Her clean, intimate prose shows how learning to howl like a wolf is also learning to howl like a human."
-- Gary Snyder, author of Turtle Island

"In one of the most wonderfully titled, subtitled, and crafted books I know, Kathleen Dean Moore shares just what's worth cleaving to in this world.  Surely at home in the natural world, but humbly so, she is full of question and wonder; and through her own keen view, she gently urges us to come home too.  Elegantly and precisely written with gentle force and the soft authority of the modest watcher, HOLDFAST ranges from kelp to singing fish, from mayflies to bears, from the philosopher's night thoughts to the mother's day-bright revelations.  HOLDFAST is her testimony to deep experience, her witnessing to the rich world, her invitation."
-- Robert Michael Pyle, author of Where Bigfoot Walks

"As the thread that bind humans to the natural world unravel, we need Kathleen Dean Moore to help us weave them together again.  These stories form an eloquent and faithful tapestry."
-- Ellen Meloy, author of The Last Cheater's Waltz

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