I love running, rain, running in rain, and hunting for almost anything, including clams, calypso orchids, deer, dogwood blossoms, elk, errant thoughts, fossils, firewood, old bones, old forests, orange agates polished by endless pounding waves, sunrises, sunsets, salamanders, salmon, salmonberries, wild mushrooms, Wild Turkey, wild turkeys, and that Lazuli Bunting singing his beautiful blue-orange brains out from a dead tree in a desert canyon.

My writing explores the messy interface of human experience and the natural world. I’m a biologist and have authored or coauthored over thirty scientific papers. I’m deeply grateful for all that science has taught us over the millennia. But I believe that to become alive, science needs beautiful stories. We need love songs everyone can sing, melodies that spring from deep aquifers of wisdom into the bright light of day to become joyful sunlit riffles that run over bright stones then pour into thoughtful pools sheltering small dark trout.

My latest book, Palindrome: Grateful Reflections from the Home Ground, is a collection of short essays, prose poems, and poems that embrace departed family, raspberry sunrises, imminent storms, and the bloodshot stare of a sharp-shinned hawk. My earlier book, Blackberries in July: A Forager's Field Guide to Inner Peace, is a seasonal chronology of stories that anchored my return to the Pacific Northwest. My writing has also appeared in the collection Forest Under Story, Oregon Quarterly Magazine, and Turtle Island Review.

My blog resides at www.tomtitus.com.