For 20 years Liz Caile challenged the readers of her weekly columns in The Mountain-Ear newspaper to consider things in a way they probably hadn’t before. Sometimes what she wrote was challenging, but she always left the reader with something to consider.

She treasured the natural world, and our interconnection with it. Liz sought to exist in harmony with the land. She spent much of her adult life living in small cabins, only accessible by foot, where she raised her three sons.

When the U.S. Forest Service bulldozed her cabin due to it being on an un-patented mining claim, Liz was spurred on to begin sharing her experiences and insights through her writing, composing articles about what was important to her: the environment, war, society, and her family.

By the time Liz was 51 she was suffering from what the doctors thought was rheumatoid arthritis, but which turned out to be a brain tumor. Two years later, on Valentine’s Day in 1998, Liz Caile left behind her insightful and provocative writings to the world and future generations, encouraging us to appreciate the natural world around us, and “to sift for the truth” ourselves.