I grew up in California and immersed myself in the natural world at an early age. What began as a love affair with the High Sierra eventually led to a career in field biology and teaching. For me the natural world is a sanctuary and place of inspiration, which has nurtured my scientific research, creative writing, body, and spirit. I’m grateful to have shared this world with students, friends, and family, as well as those who read my writing.
"In the Fullness of Time" is a phrase attributed to a medieval German mystic, Meister Eckhart. The phrase reflects my fascination with evolution and "deep time,” such as the temporal depth encountered while floating through Marble Canyon, beneath 340-million-year-old cliffs of Redwall Limestone. Then there are the shorter time scales of ecological interaction and the human lifespan. Ecologies develop, ebb and flow, as do our lives, the lives of our ancestors and those of our children. And all the beauty, love, joy, sadness, and pain of this world will come to us in the fullness of time.
So, welcome, and let's explore this bounty together.
exploring the fullness of time
WELCOME
"Thirty below on a windy December night, with the waxing moon high in the sky. I climb out of the spruce, away from Warden’s Grove and the Thelon River. Hard snow crunches underfoot, and each inhaled breath is ragged in my nose.
Overhead the aurora dances in ribbons of color - purple, yellow, and green curtains streaming through the sky. From the crest of the hill, the Barrens lie clothed in a liquid, silver light - a great, undulating sweep of land locked in the grip of winter.
I recall the words of Meister Eckhart, a fourteenth-century German mystic: “There is nothing in creation so like God as stillness.”
in the north of our lives
An excerpt from:
Photo courtesy Kristen Gilbertson Olesen
BOOK
REVIEWS
WHAT REviEweRS ARE SAYING
— Geoffrey Norman, Outside
For In the North of Our Lives :
"His descriptions of the vast, forbidding country where the group wintered, his respectful and honest account of their difficulties, and his eye on the absurdity of the accident that rained down on their heads, all make this a very strong and satisfying narrative, a message too big to miss."
— Rafe Sagarin, Science
For Return to Warden’s Grove :
The life history of the Harris’s sparrow is the framework for a story that . . . takes the reader on a grand tour of key themes that define our current juncture in the life sciences . . . What comes out clearly above all in Warden’s Grove is the “goodness” of natural history work."
— Kirkus Reviews
For In the Memory of the Map :
“Norment writes eloquently about the allegorical aspects of maps and evinces a wide acquaintance with scientific and creative literature . . . A journey through life with a guide who knows the trail and its wonders and who delights in the unexpected vistas that elevation can offer.”
— Elizabeth Kolbert,
author of Under a White Sky
For Relicts of a Beautiful Sea :
"This is a lovely book — a work of natural history that is also an exploration of what it means to be human. It’s informative, evocative, and probing.”
