"I would become, I wrote in my journal, a park ranger or an archaeologist or camp cook," Lord writes in an essay, "In the Giant's Hand," in her new collection, "Rock, Water, Wild: An Alaskan Life."

"It didn't matter to me -- something where I could be out in the field," she said.

When she moved to Homer in 1973 with her partner Ken Castner after graduating from Hampshire College, Lord also didn't worry about what she would do to make a living.

"From the beginning, I understood that my life depended on place," she writes in her book. "In the right place, my life would find its shape, as indeed it did. I worked at whatever jobs allowed me to be where I wanted to be."

Thirty-eight years after first coming to Alaska, the shape of her life has come into being. Now Alaska's Writer Laureate, Lord has published three collections of fiction, three nonfiction books and dozens of articles and essays. This month, the University of Nebraska Press published "Rock, Water, Wild: An Alaskan Life," a collection of essays and articles going back 20 years. Lord reads from and discusses her work at a book signing and talk at 7 p.m. Monday at Bunnell Street Arts Center.

"I tried to rework it into something like a memoir by shaping these pieces and trying to make it sound like all one voice -- having a narrative arc of my life," Lord said.

The title came to Lord long before Homer writer Miranda Weiss's own memoir of Alaska, "Tide, Feather, Snow," Lord said. It's only coincidental that the titles are similar.

"When I thought about the collection as a whole, those seemed to be themes," she said. "There are a lot of rocks. There's a lot of water and concepts of the wild."

"Rock, Water, Wild" also reminds her of poet John Haines' own memoir of the north, "The Stars, the Snow, the Fire," she said.

The heart of the book concerns her life in Alaska, the middle section, "In the Country." She looks at the connections between Alaska Native words and the land, urban moose, remote seabird rookeries, ducks, rivers and, of course, bears.

Although some of her first writing was in journalism -- including early work at the Homer News -- Lord doesn't think of herself as a reporter.

"Writing was a way of processing stuff," she said of her work. "It was the same with journalism. It gives you a chance to learn stuff and figure out what you think about it."

Lord's writing has a clear voice, though, and a clear narrator -- herself, not the distant, fly-on-the-wall viewpoint of journalism. She uses some of the reporter's techniques, however.

"I wanted to have an opinion about things. I didn't want to pretend to be objective." Lord said. "I try to be fair, try to be accurate, try to be sensitive."

Writers have an obligation to be careful when writing about other cultures and to represent them in a way that's not harmful -- "Like being a guest in someone's home," Lord said.

"It's good to think about those who don't have a voice -- including the environment and animals -- and not speak for them, but give a voice to things that might otherwise not be heard," she said.

Unlike other professional writers who write nose-to-the-grindstone day in and day out, Lord has other passions in her life. Lord has been a longtime environmentalist and was a founding member of the Kachemak Bay Conservation Society and the Alaska Marine Conservation Council. She also received the 1994 Alaska Conservation Foundation's Celia Hunter Award for "exemplary volunteer service to the environmental movement in Alaska." Conservation has been a focus of her life, but she's also a tireless advocate for libraries.

Through the University of Alaska Anchorage both at Kachemak Bay Campus and UAA's writing program, Lord has taught numerous classes in fiction and nonfiction, and is on the faculty of the Kachemak Bay Writers Conference. She also has taught at Lower 48 workshops and conferences.

"Even though (writing) is the main thing I'm doing, other things take over," Lord said.

Lord writes sporadically, she said, and has become skilled at finding obscure artist retreats. She's attended 15 different such residencies, some more than once, and usually for a month. Later this year she'll go to I-Park, an artists retreat in East Haddam, Conn.

"I still do my best writing when I go away," Lord said. "I probably get as much done in a month as I do the rest of the year."

Lord's current book, tentatively titled "Early Warming," looks at climate change in Alaska and how it affects different communities and areas. It will be place oriented, she said, visiting boreal forests, the oceans and eroding coastal communities. One question she'll ponder is why temperatures aresincreasing more in Alaska than globally, such as a 4.5 degree Fahrenheit increase in Homer since the 1940s compared to less than 1 degree overall.

Throughout Lord's writing is a humility about herself and respect and awe for Alaska.

"I'm not that interesting as a person," she writes in "Rock, Water, Wild."

"I have written largely of Alaska, in this book and others, not only because Alaska is my home and thus the place I know best but because it's the last place in America that's big enough and wild enough to hold the intact landscapes and the dreams that are so absent today from almost everywhere else."

Michael Armstrong can be reached at michael.armstrong.@homernews.com.