| Abstrakt: |
Brenda Peterson bonded with Pacific Northwest woods and water as a child, and her "ecological stories" (as she prefers calling her prose pieces) reflect a spirit-infused vision of a mothering universe. For Peterson, the earth is alive, animals are brothers and sisters, and ancient trees are elders. Writing from a self-consciously feminine perspective, she urges connection with other species and the world around us as she chronicles her own mentoring by the waters of Puget Sound, by dolphins, by goddess religions and Native American spirituality, by other women. The daughter of a U.S. Forest Service employee who eventually became head of the Forest Service, Peterson spent the first seven years of her life in an isolated cabin in the Sierras of northern California. The family then zigzagged across the country with her father's career, and after earning a B.A. in English and comparative literature from the University of California at Davis, Peterson herself did some zigzagging before settling in the Seattle area. She worked as an editorial assistant at the New Yorker, farmed near Denver and served as writer-in-residence at Arizona State University, worked as a writer for Recreational Equipment Incorporated (REI), and published two novels before consciously committing herself to nature writing. Living by Water. Essays on Life, Land, and Spirit (1990) and Nature and Other Mothers (1992), from which the following selection is taken, began to earn Peterson a reputation for envisioning nature, animals, and spirit in a way that might enable healing of broken bonds. Her story collection Singing to the Sound: Visions of Nature, Animals, and Spirit (2000) and her memoir Build Me an Ark: A Life with Animals (2001) continue the journey. Peterson has collaborated with Linda Hogan on anthologies about women's connections to animals and to plants, as well as on a book about gray whales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
