Seeing Lessons

A vivid and sensitive poetry-portrait of a pioneering woman photographer and the British Columbia forests she captured on film. Mattie Gunterman (1872?1945) is a fascinating character, capable of walking from Seattle to Beaton, BC, running a full camp-kitchen, caring for her children and taking fascinating portraits of a British Columbia that has all but vanished, both the people and the trees. In thoughtful and elegantly written poems, Catherine Owen traces the life of this remarkable woman, contrasting both modern life and the modern environment with what Mattie would have encountered. Part biography, part environmental elegy, Seeing Lessons leaves readers seeing the world in a different light.