About

I'm glad you found your way here. I'm Heather (she/they), and writing is my passion. Essays, travel writing, poetry, research, rants, ponderings and musings. I am a collector of stories, a dreamer, and a wordsmith.

I am a geographer and naturalist, and this site is dedicated to my wandering, storytelling, and my environmental work. Nothing inspires me like landscapes. I love to take photographs in nature, and share where I have been, what it taught me, highlight and recommend experiences, and sometimes even recommend gear.

I identify as a Pagan and animist, and places call to me. Trees, rivers, stones, forests, mountains, and the cultures, myths, and stories associated with them. As a geographer, I walk the earth and observe place. I love the research that comes before the adventure, from the geology, to the politics, the folklore, history, and to the language, if it's outside my own. I want to get off the beaten path and find the heart of a place, and tell the story of what makes it so special. I often walk quietly, taking photos, and notes. As a naturalist, the land and all its beings teach me. Repeated exposure and exchange lead to a reciprocal relationship with places, and I love to teach others how to develop these relationships as well.

I have been a writer since I could hold a pencil. I always kept a diary as a child, and began writing poetry in elementary school. I wrote my first novella at the age of 9. I began to write terrible love songs as I taught myself a bit of guitar as a teenager. I fell in love with writing research papers in high school, and really enjoyed writing my master's thesis in graduate school. I enjoy switching between the different styles. My poetry is a dance between the muses and myself, a sacred duty to give words to the unseen, and I hope it inspires others.

We are currently existing in polycrisis across the globe, and climate change and rising temperatures are causing devastating effects to livelihoods, land, water, and wildlife. Our wild spaces are in trouble. Whole culture's ways of life are threatened as authoritarian governments and billionaires attempt to take the commons away from the people. Greed and disconnection from the natural world are at the root of these crises, as we have forgotten that we too are just furry mammals with simple needs. I look at environmental issues through the lens of environmental justice and political ecology, as these crises are unevenly distributed. Overconsumption is literally killing us. My mission is to highlight the beauty and magic of the earth, and get others excited about the outdoors. In the words of the great Robin Wall Kimmerer, "To love a place is not enough. We must find ways to heal it.”

Aside from wandering and writing, I have a background in psychology and social work. I have also been an instructor of mindful movement for many years. I then went back to school to study geography, with an emphasis in nature based solutions to combat climate change and rising temperatures in the urban ecosystem, and I lean into my science background in some of my writing. I feel the mission of all of the work that I do is to reweave relationship with land. I lead regular native plant walks and guided hikes in the Portland metro region.

I was born and raised in the Arkansan Ozarks, ancestral home to the Osage, Quapaw, and Caddo tribes. I now reside in Portland, Oregon, which sits on the traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes who made their homes along the Columbia River. I acknowledge my status as a descendant of settler colonialism in North America, and my duty to combat continued actions of such destructive systems.