Eva Saulitis: “I will know how to die.”
by eatonhamilton
Today, Eva Saulitis, biologist, essayist, poet died of metastatic breast cancer.
She has left us her work with the AT1 pod of orcas in Alaska, documenting the decimation during the Exxon Valdez spill of what is now, when it is too late to save them, thought to be a separate species of whale.
Death is capricious and cruel, and I wonder as you must, in this January of domino-deaths, why someone so talented and necessary has been lost, and why we can’t bargain our life for hers.
I urge you to read The Woman Who Loves Orcas, below, and to listen to her fine essay Wild Darkness.
Her books:
Leaving Resurrection: Chronicles of a Whale Scientist, essays
Many Ways to Say It, poetry
Into Great Silence: Discovery and Loss Among Vanishing Orcas, memoir
Eva Saulitis reading from the Alaska Quarterly Review
A review of Leaving Resurrection: Chronicles of a Whale Scientist
Eaton Hamilton 
An amazing woman. She lifted a mirror to our own mortality. The planet just became a little darker for me with her passing.