Susan Cope was born in the foothills of the Berkshires in Massachusetts and has lived most of her life close to the Pacific Ocean in Southern California. Work in television news exposed her to clear-cut forests, open mines, wildfires, and blacktop so hot it melted the soles of her shoes. She is one of few who survived an impressive, secondary eruption of Mount St. Helen from a helicopter tossed around inside the crater. The fragility of her own life led to an awareness of the precariousness of all life in a world of global climate change. Motherhood and new adventures as a teacher accentuated how much we have to lose, but offered optimism too. A grandmother now, she hopes we can still wake from this nightmare, still save our threatened home, this earth.