Author

Steven Simpson

Five years ago I started this website as a way to promote new books I had coming out. Finally I have something to announce. Purdue University Press just released my latest and most personal book, Essays to My Daughter on Our Relationship With the Natural World. 

Back when my daughter Clare was excitedly preparing for her freshmen year in college, I’d planned to send her a series of letters about the importance of spending time outdoors. She was about to leave home, most likely forever, and I wasn’t going to be there to take her hiking and canoeing. The letters never got sent, but instead they morphed into a book about experiencing nature and learning the lessons that nature provides. With Clare now finished with college and working at a small green technology firm, I can tell her and everyone else about fishing with an otter, sitting atop a mountain at dawn with eighty Taiwanese backpackers, and driving home from a class trip to Aldo Leopold’s Shack.

Because I worked forty years as an environmental educator, I’ve probably spent more time in the outdoors than most people have, but my experiences are not any more spectacular than anybody else’s. Those who pick up the book will read the stories and say, “I can do those things, I have done those things” and then realize they should spend even more time in the woods, at the beach, and on the water.

The Leader Who is Hardly Known

The Art of Self-less Teaching From the Chinese Tradition

The Processing Pinnacle

An Educator’s Guide to Better Processing

The Chiji Guidebook

A Collection of Experiential Activities and Ideas for Using Chiji Cards