The Shimmering Is All There Is: On Nature, God, Science, and More, by Heather Catto Kohout, ed. by Martin Donell Kohout, 2021
Purchase Book (Publication date 8/10/2021)
The Shimmering Is All There Is: On Nature, God, Science, and More is a collection of essays and poems by the late Heather Catto Kohout. A native of San Antonio, Heather was a disciplined and original thinker and writer. Her education, experience, and temperament—as a loving wife, mother, and daughter; a proud Texan; a teacher and scholar with graduate degrees in English literature and religion; and the founder of a residency program for environmental writers and artists at a ranch in the Texas Hill Country—permeate every word she wrote. She had a unique combination of empathetic imagination, profound spirituality, cosmic sensibility, and an ability to laugh—gently—at her fellow creatures and, especially, herself.
Heather Kohout’s essays and poems are thoughtful, profound, and generous, shifting constantly between the specific and the universal and carrying throughout a message of stewardship. She was an environmentalist at heart, but her writing explores so much more: nature, art, theology, science, food, and family. She wrote about Mexican teenagers who dress as angels in an attempt to halt drug-related violence; the perils of industrial agriculture; the pleasure of letting the chickens out of their coop in the morning; and the battle to save the Georgetown salamander. Always, she wrote about what it means to try to live an ethical life and to be fully human as a part of, not in opposition to, nature. These essays and poems exemplify the best of Texas womanhood: stubborn independence, fierce conviction, good humor, and instinctive generosity and kindness.
A native of San Antonio, HEATHER CATTO KOHOUT (1959–2014) was a dedicated rower, a published poet, a freelance theology teacher, and the mother of three children. She cofounded Madroño Ranch: A Center for Writing, Art, and the Environment in Medina, Texas. MARTIN DONELL KOHOUT is the author of Hal Chase: The Defiant Life and Turbulent Times of Baseball’s Biggest Crook, cofounder of Madroño Ranch, and president of the Madroño Foundation. He lives in San Francisco, California.