I became aware of Kathleen Dean Moore when I took Dr. Rebekah Sinclair’s course in World Views and Environmental Values at Oregon State University. Among many assignments, my peers and I were asked to read a few essays written by Moore. Almost immediately, her writer’s voice gladdened my heart. She is both an erudite stylist and a skilled turner of phrases. Moreover, she writes the truth via sensory experiences that take readers in new, positive directions despite the dark anthropogenic clouds that thicken each decade of this new century.
I am reading her current book Take Heart: Encouragement for Earth’s Weary Lovers. In the book’s essay “the night of the ice moon,” she writes of huckleberry tangles, and I am reminded of Thoreau’s essay “Huckleberries” in which he begins with the intimate remembrance of picking huckleberries before lamenting humanity’s disconnection from nature’s direct experiences. Moore is the inheritor of this literary styling. She begins with small descriptions, such as huckleberry tangles in one essay and the single eye of a fish in another essay, and extends her written thoughts to the one-eyed behavior of humanity’s limited perspectives in navigating climate change.
The targeted readership of Take Heart sounds specific. But the audience should be everyone. We are on the same sphere that orbits the sun. We are weary from the serious stories of climate change. It’s a human-caused narrative. In Kathleen Dean Moore’s book there is not an avoidance of the human-caused mistakes we must correct for our survival. However, there is comfort and hope on her pages. We need a lot of that to lift us as humans who want a bright future for all species.
I recommend this book to everyone, from the environmental activist to the concerned citizen. Kathleen Dean Moore is professor emeritus from Oregon State University.
