In his 2010 book, Circumference of Home, Whidbey Island writer Kurt Hoelting shares insights from a year of car-free living, during which he explored the Whidbey and Skagit regions on foot, by bicycle and sea kayak. Now, in his new memoir Apprentice to the Wild, Hoelting shares stories from his life as a commercial fisherman and wilderness guide in Alaska, and his embrace of Zen practice and mindfulness teaching as gateways to the “wild within”.

During our January 18th service, Hoelting spoke about the theme of “Embracing the Storm”–a theme central to his new book–during his sermon at the Skagit UU Fellowship on January 18th. “How, then, shall I live?”, in the face of the storms now gathering on our human horizons? What can we respond fruitfully and with resilience to these storms, with the courage that faith requires, and the compassion that faith makes possible?

Kurt Hoelting grew up by the shores of Puget Sound, working summers as a commercial fisherman and wilderness guide in Alaska for fifty years. A graduate of the University of Washington and Harvard Divinity School, he is an ordained United Church of Christ minister and longtime Zen student, who has blended his love of wilderness exploration with an equal passion for exploring the “wild within”. A mindfulness teacher in a variety of contexts, he served as Head Guide with Inside Passages, leading mindfulness-based sea kayaking expeditions in the Tongass wilderness of Southeast Alaska for twenty-seven years. He makes his home on Whidbey Island.