Essay in New Cascadia Anthology

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I’m honored that my essay, “Aging in Place,” is included in a new anthology published by Empty Bowl Press. Cascadia Works: Tend, Gather, Harvest, Restore, includes poetry and prose by more than 120 contributors who work the land and sea of the Cascadia bioregion. The editors write: “Together, this collection creates a moving, powerful portrait of those with deep connections to the land and sea that sustain us and calls for reciprocity and wisdom in how we care for and steward Cascadia.”

In the essay, centered around a 2025 backpacking trip in the North Cascades, I reflect on the rewards and vulnerabilities of working in the wilderness as a sexagenarian woman. I begin:

The seventeen-mile backpack to McCall Gulch feels even longer when your lungs are burning and the flies are biting. I had visited this secluded destination in the North Cascades several times since the 2017 Diamond Creek Fire, which transformed 128,000 acres of Washington’s Pasayten Wilderness into a blackened forest of frail and fallen matchsticks. But prior trips didn’t prepare me for the hard-won humility I experienced eight years after the fire, surveying for snow-dependent wildlife under the searing, unyielding sun of mid-July.

I’ll post an announcement about a public reading at a later date. Meanwhile, please purchase a copy of this moving anthology at the link below.