Barb Lachenbruch (she/her) is a forest ecologist, wood scientist, and former professor at Oregon State University who splits her time between Corvallis and her cabin in Alsea. Her writing is inspired by her connections with nature and the challenges of balancing university work in a male-dominated field with the other parts of her life. During the pandemic, she began substitute teaching, which continues to provide her much satisfaction and unexpected exposure to life. Her degrees are in biology from Swarthmore, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Stanford, and she had a post-doc at Berkeley. She started her research in poison oak, but left it rather quickly for trees, with a focus on learning how they adjust their wood and branch structures to meet both their biomechanical and hydraulic needs—meaning how the same body transports water, resists drought, and holds the plant up. But she has always delved beyond the biophysics, into awe and wonder, as well. She hopes her writing will encourage readers to have more compassion, seek strength from nature, and make better decisions that affect environment, civility, and justice. She has published essays and creative nonfiction in High Country News, CALYX, Gold Man Review, Oregon Humanities’ Beyond the Margins, and the National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir Series, and has published poems and short fiction in the Willawaw Journal, Flyway, Plants & Poetry Journal, and an anthology of nested stories.