Anne Ford — who is, by the way, a great example of a writer-as-polymath and whose work I always enjoy for its thorough, open-minded take on whatever it is that has captured her attention — has a nice piece in this week’s Reader on my friend Nance Klehm. 

This passage handily sums up why I like her so much:

But don’t call her green. “Those terms are marketing terms,” Klehm says. “They are not helping us connect to a more abundant and self-renewing way of being.” The question she wants people to ask isn’t “Which ‘green’ products should I buy?” It’s “What’s the nature of my connection to the soil, and can I deepen it?”

I would also add that I was on the foraging walk where she found the morels (mentioned a bit further down the piece), and not only did she scream, she jumped up and down shrieking like a little kid and then flung herself into the grass, kicking her feet in the air. I think the last thing to get me that excited was the popsicle man.

I’ve been on several of these walks and taken a bunch of her clases, but, frankly, my retention is not so great. I still have trouble identifying lamb’s quarters from a foot away, and I think I have killed all the worms in my compost bin. What I have internalized from Nance’s work is the belief that it’s still possible to see the world as source of unending discovery. And that’s pretty cool.