Lora Hein

Lora Hein was born in Oregon to parents who met in a college club called the Naturalists and instilled in her a love of nature, art, music, and reading.

Lora is currently working on a memoir, “Just Me and the Bears.”  When she was 19 years old, between stints in college, she fled Oakland, CA for the Sierra where she spent a year and five summers working, hiking and backpacking in Yosemite National Park. Exploring wilderness alone gave her strength and trust in her own capabilities from close encounters with the wildlife of Yosemite. There she discovered what she longed to bring to the world.

After her true education from direct interaction with nature and earning a degree in Environmental Studies from Sonoma State University, Lora pursued a variety of ways to earn a living while being close to nature, including being a seasonal park ranger and fire lookout in the North Cascades, air pollution control technician and inspector, teaching for Upward Bound and Concrete School District, and designing and building passive solar houses in Washington State.

Her previous work in progress (“Tortoise Moon,” a young naturalist’s discoveries in the Galápagos Islands) was selected as a finalist in the Nonfiction/Memoir category of the Pacific Northwest Writers’ Association Literary Contest. An excerpt from it was published in True Stories, vol. 1, The Narrative Project. Her story “The Rose Lady and Honey” won second place in the Write on the Sound non-fiction short story contest in 2022. “Climbing Half Dome,” the story of being part of the first all woman pair to climb a grade lV route on that icon, won a place in the Red Wheelbarrow Writers’ contest, published as an anthology, Spring And All.

Lora now calls Edmonds, Washington, home, where she and her spouse enjoy, appreciate and enhance the arts, natural surroundings, and community with as sustainable a lifestyle as possible.