Living By Water - Brenda Peterson

Essays on Life, Land and Spirit

Brenda Peterson

2002 Fiction (Reviewed by J Zamost)
Author Profile

In Living By Water, novelist Brenda Peterson explores through essay nature’s revelation…the simple rhythms of water. From the shores of Puget Sound, she observes seals, whales, and seabirds; watches the changing tides and weather; and notes how the natural world shapes the lives and spirits of the inhabitants – animal and human – of her chosen home.

From Thoreau’s reflections on Walden Pond to Annie Dillard’s journal of life at Tinker Creek, writers have found that water can shape a life and a philosophy. In that same tradition, Brenda Peterson writes “I’ve apprenticed myself to Puget Sound because I believe it will teach me more about living than what I’ve learned so far.”

Skillfully applying nature’s wisdom to our painfully disconnected lives, Peterson helps us to re-connect with our own forgotten wisdom and body knowledge. Each story/essay I found to be deeply healing and sustaining.

With co-editors Linda Hogan and Deena Metzger, Peterson has edited the best-selling anthology Intimate Nature: The Bond Between Women and Animals (Ballantine). Volume II in this series of Women and the Natural World is The Sweet Breathing of Plants: Women Writing on the Green World (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux). Volume III in the series is Face to Face: Women Look at God (Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2003). The sequel to Peterson's popular classic Living by Water is entitled Singing to the Sound: Visions of Nature, Animals, and Spirit.

Links: Earth Connection

Simple Living Resources
James and Tyra Arraj--A Guide to Valuable Resources, Important Information and Exotic Tidbits

Intentional Communities website-- Intentional Community is an inclusive term for ecovillages, cohousing, residential land trusts, communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives and other related projects and dreams.

How much do you know about the environmental impact of your choices?

The Great Green Web Game

Northwest Earth Institute
series of discussion courses, developed in Portland, but available to groups anywhere in the United States:

LocalHarvest -
Founded in 1998, LocalHarvest is now the number one informational resource for the Buy Local movement and the top place on the Internet where people find information on direct marketing family farms.

Community Supported Agriculture -
CSA, Community Supported Agriculture, is a relationship of mutual support and commitment between local farmers and community members who pay the farmer an annual membership fee to cover the production cost of the farm. In turn, members receive a weekly share of the harvest during the local growing season.

Slow Food U.S.A. -
Slow Food U.S.A. is an educational organization dedicated to stewardship of the land and ecologically sound food production, to the revival of the table as centers of pleasure, culture, and community.

Earthsave -
Educates people about the powerful effects our food choices have on the environment, our health and all life on Earth, and encourages a shift toward a healthy, plant-based diet

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Links: Earth Connection