I wanted to belong so badly to something living isolated as we did, so I decided that well,

I guess I'll just belong to nature. That'll be my world, my community, so to speak.

And I've never looked back. That's been my orientation since a little child.

As long as you stay connected with nature and all the other beings, you're never lonely.

You're always part of something bigger than yourself. And if you let it take care of you,

you can take care of you in amazing ways. But in turn, you have to take care of it as well.

You have to protect nature so it can be there for you. I have become a real advocate of

the idea that we're all in one neighborhood on this planet and every being has equal rights.

And that's something I read or made up, but something I totally experienced in my life.

That was Mossy Kiltcher. She's a homesteader, a musician, and an ornithologist.

When she was young, she was afraid of nature. It was just so big and there were so many ways to die.

But the more time she spent outdoors, the better she understood it.

Making music and recording bird songs helped too. She realized that it wasn't about

taming the wilderness or dominating nature, like her father believed. It was about living in

unison with it. That if you take care of it, it will be there for you when you inevitably need it.

Understanding her place in nature helped her understand her role in it.

For example, she found that if she sat still for long enough, she became invisible,

and she could see and listen to nature doing its business all around her.

She says that this was a sobering thought that everything is important, not just her.

She recently released a book, a memoir, that focuses on her upbringing,

homesteading in Alaska before it was a state, living off the grid and off the land.

They hunted and they gathered. It was a self-sufficient lifestyle that her father sought out,

...