Hands Like Roots: Notes on an Entangled Contemplative Path‍

For years Therese DesCamp has viewed, pondered and absorbed life in the Slocan Valley.

Hands Like Roots: Notes on an Entangled, Contemplative Life draws its subject matter from roots deep in science, spirituality, and a love of life. This liminal work integrates seemingly disparate knowledge-hydrology, cognitive linguistics, climate instability, embodiment-with the inner experience of prayer and meditation, creating an accessible, poetic, heart-opening whole. Authentic, impassioned, intelligent and vulnerable, Hands Like Roots is a real love story about a human heart and the Heart of the Ineffable.

The long-time New Denver author and community activist DesCamp said her book is a series of prose meditations exploring life as a contemplative planted firmly in the midst of community.

“The books’ chapters integrate seemingly disparate knowledge — hydrology, cognitive linguistics, climate instability — with a lived spirituality,” she said.

DesCamp, minister of the Slocan Valley’s Turner Zion United Church, served 10 years on the Slocan Lake Stewardship Society among her other community activities. An ongoing columnist for New Denver’s Valley Voice newspaper, her writing was a finalist for the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize.

In her forward to the collection, award-winning science writer Alanna Mitchell, called DesCamp a “…metamorphoser . . . storyteller, teacher to us all.”