Evelyn Searle Hess

After camping in their woods for sixteen years, author Evelyn Searle Hess and her husband David were ready for some serious nesting. In a quest to build lives in harmony with the planet and all of their fellow earthlings, Hess explores the challenges at various levels of interlocking nests: house, ecosystem, social and economic systems, world community and environment.

At various times a teacher, gardener, garden designer, greenhouse manager, nature guide and nursery owner as well as being a mother, grandmother and now great grandmother, Hess currently weeds, writes and watches wildlife in the Coast Range foothills southwest of Eugene, Oregon. Her book To the Woods: Sinking Roots, Living Lightly, and Finding True Home, OSU Press, won the 2011 WILLA Literary Award for Best Creative Nonfiction.