Brit Washburn is a poet and essayist whose work emerges from the practice of slowing down and paying attention—to sensory experience, the natural world, the people she loves, and the written word—in order to discern how we might live with passion and purpose amidst the demands of daily life and in the face of impending and incessant loss. She believes in the consolations of beauty and of philosophy; long walks, hot tea, ripe fruit, and physical touch; in nurturing and nourishing ourselves and one another, and in caring for this planet and its inhabitants. She is inspired by writing that caresses and cuts to the quick, by kindness and candor, clarity and paradox, from Montaigne to Middlemarch, Sappho to Richard Hugo.