The Ecology of Awareness: Field Notes from a Life of Noticing

Some things arrive without asking permission.What does a mouse trembling in your hands beside a pair of nail clippers, a dog who has climbed into the dryer to wait out a thunderstorm, and a hurricanethat took the house and the neighborhood have to do with ecology?Everything, it turns out.That is what an ecologist notices when he turnshis scientific lens inward, through fifty years of meditation.For forty years, Robert F. Doren worked as a wetland ecologist, studying how living systems function. He did not expect that the samehabits of attention in the natural world would one day turn inward, or that a lifetime of quietmeditation would gradually reveal a pattern he had been living inside allalong.The Ecology of Awareness is a memoir in field notes: patient, observant, andunafraid to say that love and attention may be the same thing. Robert Doren shares his practice of finding peace by blending compelling self-awareness with parallels of ecosystem science. His candid reflection, open heart, and ability to notice the small things-in nature and in people-is a lesson that illuminates moments of joy and hope. - Susan Markley, Ph.D., Ecologist