Priscilla Stuckey

Priscilla Stuckey is a writer and spiritual counselor with a passion for reconnecting people with nature, including their own natures. Her first book, Kissed by a Fox: And Other Stories of Friendship in Nature, won the 2013 WILLA Award in Creative Nonfiction. Stuckey received a PhD from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, in religious studies and feminist theory. She has taught humanities and writing in the graduate programs of Prescott College and Naropa University. She lives at the base of the Sandia Mountains near Albuquerque with her partner, Tim, and their dog, Bodhi.

Books

Tamed By a Bear

Coming Home to Nature-Spirit-Self

"Priscilla Stuckey shines a brilliant light on the relationship we long to cultivate with the deepest wellsprings of our wisdom and love . . . This is a groundbreaking book, written with extraordinary clarity, beauty, and radical honesty." —Gail D. Storey, author of I Promise Not to Suffer: A Fool for Love Hikes the Pacific Crest Trail, winner of the National Outdoor Book Award

In an age of materialism, language of spirit or spirits seems at best suspect and at worst alien or naïve. When Priscilla Stuckey begins hearing Bear’s voice, she is a writer and religious studies professor in her fifties. Though she enjoys communing with trees and birds and the land, she intellectually knows better than to try talking directly with spirit. Yet searching for the truth of her own identity leads her directly toward what she is most skeptical of. As Stuckey opens to her spirit animal helper and his affectionate, jovial wisdom, she begins to realize the slow dawning of faith. Tamed by a Bear shows one person responding to the call of her heart, which is also the call of Earth to all human beings today: to listen to a more–than–human wisdom so people can address the social and environmental crises facing the world.

At this moment, when the future of life on Earth as we know it hangs in the balance—threatened by climate change, species extinctions, and extreme economic inequality—the key to survival is found in answering one question: How can humans live more peaceably and sustainably with the rest of nature? The heart–opening conversations between Bear and Stuckey suggest a reinvigorating of nature–spirituality in everyday life. Their dialogues show an educated, thoughtful person grappling with her skepticism about Earth spirits and gradually saying yes to a call from beyond her intellectual understanding.

Kissed by a Fox

And Other Stories of Friendship in Nature

"Dissatisfaction with nature flows throughout Western civilization, as deep as its blood, as abiding as its bones. Convinced to the marrow that something is deeply wrong with nature, . . . the Western world tries to remake it into something better."

For Priscilla Stuckey, this is a fundamental and heartbreaking misconception: that nature can be fixed, exploited, or simply ignored. Modern societies try to bend nature to human will instead of engaging in give–and–take with a living, breathing land community.

Using her personal experiences as the cornerstone, Stuckey explores the depth of relationship possible with the birch tree in our backyard, the nearby urban creek, the dog who settles on our bed each night.

Drawing inspiration from sources as varied as ancient philosophers and contemporary biologists, Stuckey challenges readers to enact a different story of nature, one in which people and place are not separate, where other creatures respond to human need, and where humans and all others together create the world.

With the eloquence of the great nature writers before her, Stuckey encourages us to open ourselves to the unlimited possibilities of a truly connected life.