About

I grew up in woods on the cusp of Midcoast and Downeast Maine (choosing a tent behind my parents’ house as my luxurious bedroom for more than half of my childhood), where my passion for the outdoors and the people who live it began. I went to college off the coast of Maine where I focused on ethnobotany and natural history, apprenticed with an English herbalist to learn more about the relationship between people and plants, moved to California to teach at an outdoor school in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range for a year, moved back to Maine to be the caretaker of an entire island for two seasons, taught ecology in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and lived, learned, and taught in the Tetons of Wyoming. I went on to earn a Master’s degree in Resource Management and Conservation and co-founded an outdoor education organization dedicated to facilitating personal and community resilience in Downeast Maine. All these amazing experiences in the outdoors and spending time with other rural people led me to gain a greater appreciation for those people and the natural world that we all call home. I hope for this blog to honor them and inspire others.

For a sample of the breadth of content I write about in this blog, check out these posts:

The Plants and People Series: Over 50 posts on the uses of common northeastern plants

The Allagash Wilderness Waterway Canoe Trip: An example of the type of outdoor adventures and subsequent writing I tend to do.

Red Fox or Gray Fox? A good example of the type of informative natural history writing I like to include.

Advice about Collaboration from the Lady’s Slipper Orchid: One of my posts about the lessons we can learn from the natural world.

You can also follow me on Twitter: @hazel_partridge and Instagram: @partridgepinepeavey

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