Facing the Mountain

Facing the Mountain: Poems on Dying and Death, Caregiving and Hope offers comfort for those in bereavement and explores the interwoven themes of dying, death, caregiving, and hope in human nature and Nature itself. In this deeply honest, transparent, and questioning collection of poems, Linda C. Welsh explores the complexities of caring for people in their most vulnerable time of need within the context of a death-phobic society. An innovative fusion shaped from direct experience in the care of the dying, surrender to the transformative forces of life, and reverence for the living world, Facing the Mountain is a lyrical exploration of grief, aloneness, renewal, awakening, and longing.

Linda C. Welsh is a Registered Nurse certified in Hospice and Palliative Care. She has assumed many roles in the delivery of hospice care; but her joy has always been accompanying people one on one. Co-founder of Sage Mountain Center, an education center for sustainable living in Whitehall, Montana, Welsh is a distance hiker with a Master’s degree in Transformative Learning and Change.

“A love song about Life. As intimate and open as footprints in the desert with its thorns and yucca blossoms.” 
—Jan Elpel, author of Society of Poets

“Facing the Mountain captures Welsh’s profound appreciation of life’s cycle, uplifting nature’s smallest detail. Her poetry leaves nothing out—from the woeful to the transcendent.”
—Marian Jensen, author of Mining City Mysteries

“Welsh uses nature’s changing expressions to breathe acceptance into the deeply intimate process of death and dying…making death a much more acceptable inevitability.”
—Cyndi Fonda, author of Body Of Secrets: Finding My Voice  Inside A Famous Family