About Cristen
Biologist by training, storyteller by nature.
I’m Cristen Jester — a biologist, storyteller, and shamanic practitioner. I’ve spent my life at the meeting point of science and spirit, studying wild things and then listening to what they seem to be saying. My work weaves nature, adventure, the metaphysical, and the human experience into something you can actually live: a more awake, more enchanted everyday.
Two Lenses, One Naturalist
Ask me what I do and the honest answer is: I read the world twice. Once as a biologist — trained to observe, to notice pattern, to ask what a behavior or a landscape is actually doing. And once as a shamanic practitioner — trained, differently, to ask what it means, what it’s asking of me, what it’s here to teach. I don’t experience these as a contradiction. The owl outside my window is both a species with a diet and a range, and a messenger worth paying attention to. Most of what I write lives in that overlap.
Wander & Root
The other tension running through my work is wander versus rooted — a season of moving, a season of staying put, and the slow work of learning which one a given chapter of life actually calls for. I’ve done both, extensively, and I write for people somewhere in the middle: not ready to fully settle, not able to keep running forever. These days I write from the Ozarks, Missouri — cedar and oak country, where the owls and the seasons do most of the talking. It’s a rooted-enough home base for a naturalist who still gets restless.
What I Write
Everything I write sorts onto one of five shelves: The Enchanted Naturalist (nature connection, where science meets spirit), Wild & Rooted (wandering, homing, and living well and lightly), The Body, Wild (active women, through every change), Steady (inspiration and resilience for loud times), and The Feline Files (the lighter shelf — what the cats already know). However many titles arrive, there’s always a shelf for them.
The Memoir
Right now I’m finishing The Long Way to Wild, a coming-of-age memoir told in miles and molt — the story of setting out young, unraveling in unfamiliar places, and slowly learning to trust the wild, outside and in. It’s in final edits, with more news coming soon.
Beyond the page, I also work one-to-one with people ready to live more boldly and awake — coaching and shamanic sessions grounded in these same two lenses.
