What We're Reading: Katherine Recommends

I spent my childhood exploring Maine's pine forests and rocky coasts, so books on the natural world usually feel trite to me.

Because how can anyone capture the experiential magic of beloved Nature places?

But when I found myself teary after reading the first vignette of Riverwalking by Kathleen Dean Moore, I knew I had found a gem. In her first passage – with the Willamette River as a backdrop – Moore reflects on her college-bound daughter. She talks about the primal mechanism of “homing,” and the soft grief parents feel as their children truly leave home for the first time.

Her writing stirred in me a visceral and nostalgic yearning to go home.

I wanted to hop on a plane and fly East that very moment. And each passage is exquisite in its own right. Moore seamlessly slips in and out of the personal and the universal, the scientific and the soulful.

This weaving and wandering captures how I have actually communed with Nature.

If you’re looking for something inspiring, contemplative – something you can savor one bite at a time, Riverwalking is for you.