Some deep conversations of the natural world. ( )

My favorite way to spend an evening is to settle down in one of the big, overstuffed chairs at the local coffee shop with a latte and a book of essays. I'm pretty sure essays, and nature essays in particular, are my favorite form of expression. I love to know what someone else is thinking, and how they came to think it. And I love to compare notes with my own experiences in nature. This is the third book of essays I've read by Kathleen Dean Moore, and maybe the best of the lot. She is a philosophy professor and about my age, with children my children's ages, and I am always thinking to myself when I am reading her, “Here is a person I'd like to go hiking with.” I haven't spent a great deal of time in the Pacific Northwest that she writes about, but my oldest son just moved to Seattle, so I plan to visit soon. Meantime, I have to be careful talking this to the coffee shop. Several of her essays had me teary-eyed, and one, about her father, left me weeping out loud. Left-over grief from his passing last October, no doubt, but it felt wonderful to share that experience with someone who understood the way it feels. ( )

By a philosophy prof and nature writer. Essays on stitching together the rent-asunder, mostly set in Alaska and Oregon. (She owns property on the Mary's River. She never described where it was, but I'm betting that it's between Blodget and Wren.) ( )