In twenty-one lucid and elegant essays, naturalist and philosopherKathleen Dean Moore examines the human connection to nature. Shestrives to understand what holds her to family and place in a searchfor the metaphorical “holdfast” – a structure at theend of seaweed strands that attach to rocks with a grip that even oceangales cannot rend.
Kathleen Dean Moore is the distinguished professor ofphilosophy at Oregon State University and the founder of OSU’sSpring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word.
Prologue
Acknowedgments
-Connection
The Testimony of the Marsh
Holdfast
Howling with Strangers
A Field Guide to Western Birds
The Thing about Dogs
Field Notes for an Aesthetic of Storms
The Western Singing Fish
-Separation
The Song of the Canyon Wren
The Prometheus Moth
Traveling the Logging Road, Coast Range
Cast Your Frog on the Water
Memory (The Boathouse)
Baking Bread with My Daughter
Pale Monrin Dun (Ephemerella infrequens)
-Connection
On Being Afraid of Bears
Notes from the Pig-Barn Path
The Man with a Stump Where His Head Should Be
The Only Place Like This
Canoeing on the Line of a Song
Incoming Tide
Dead Reckoning
