Chapter 7: To Teach Like a Mountain:

Washington, Mingo Creek, Cook Forest, Mount Rainier, Chisos Mountain Range, Mount Cardigan, Nine Mile Run, Frick Park, San Juan Islands. These are the places from which I come, to which I am integrally connected. They signify the various landscapes of my story, contours of who I am, where I have been, where I am going, and who I am continuing to become. These places are important to me, for they ground my ecological self, that primordial part of me that identifies with the earth as a living organism with whom I dwell, and for whom I feel a sense of responsibility. In this way these places are not only important to me, for they are the land, soil, water and air that nurture the stories and very existence of so many others, both human and more-than-human, who make up the biotic community alongside me (Forbes, 2008).