Our Stories of Life in Earth Community

Lorraine Anderson, a freelance writer and editor with a special interest in connecting people with nature, has lived in the Willamette Valley since 2005. She edited Sisters of the Earth: Women’s Prose and Poetry about Nature and Earth and Eros: A Celebration in Words and Photographs; co-edited Literature and the Environment: A Reader on Nature and Culture and At Home on This Earth: Two Centuries of U.S. Women’s Nature Writing; and co-authored Cooking with Sunshine.

To read more about Lorraine's work and life in the Willamette Valley, where she's lived since 2005, click here. On her website she writes, "Here my pleasure lies in editing books on gardening and environmental topics, coaching authors in finding their best voice, teaching writing classes that connect people with nature, playing my guitar and singing at Good Samaritan Regional Hospital as part of its Arts and Health program, and tending an energy-efficient and earth-friendly home and garden."

"In recent years I've let nature be my mentor and guide as far as how to distribute my life energy, and the counsel of the dark months--November, December, January--is to rest and reflect and turn inward, so I try to minimize the presence of screens in my life at this time. I've found nature to be my surest lifeline during this pandemic and find it absolutely essential to prioritize time spent in the forest, at the wetland, and along the river over staying plugged into the electronic brain. In wild nature, my place in the family of things becomes clear and I feel myself to be beloved and to be enough just as I am. The scents, the sights, the sounds all seem to cleanse my soul, clear my mind, and ease my burdens. The steadiness of the cycle of night and day and the seasons reassures me and keeps me in balance. Witnessing the smallest lives carrying on in the wild reminds me of the human obligation to be caring members of the earth community."