Seattle author Brenda Peterson writes about connections with marine life, including whales, seals and dolphins, in the book “Wild Chorus.”

“I was raised as a wild animal,” Brenda Peterson writes in her latest book, “Wild Chorus.”

Her dad was a U.S. Forest Service ranger, so her earliest years were spent in the forests of the southern Cascade Mountains. But as he rose through the ranks and eventually became chief of the Forest Service, the family followed him through his postings in both forested and coastal areas across the nation.

As a young adult, Peterson tried out city living in New York, but eventually found the right mix of urban life and nature in Seattle, and has made it her home base for more than 40 years.

But she continues to make expeditions into the natural world, motivated by the understanding, ingrained in her from an early age, that wild animals figure prominently in her life as partners and mentors.

“My lifelong relationship with other animals is equally as dramatic, intimate and revelatory as any of my bonds with humans,” she maintains.

In the 23 essays in this book, Peterson reflects on the perspectives gained and lessons learned from close observations of — and often interactions with — wolves, birds, and other creatures, especially marine mammals.

As a girl, Peterson was caught in the undertow while playing in the ocean surf on a beach in southern California.

The near-death episode was extremely harrowing for her parents and other onlookers, but for her it was peculiarly insightful, filled with sounds and visions of “undersea splendor.” Since then, she has been fascinated by the marine world and its denizens.

In one essay, she writes about the beach not far from her home, where she and others take turns as “seal sitters” — ensuring sufficient space on the beach for seal pups to rest unbothered while their mothers go back into the sea to feed.

Too often, the seal pups are stressed out by human onlookers who crowd around, concerned that the seals have been stranded.

In other essays, she explores and celebrates the intricacies of cetacean communication, and she has championed the need for whales to have sonic waterscapes uncluttered by human noise.

She has had more direct and personal interactions, too. She has actually sung with one of the beluga whales in repeated visits to the Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma, Washington.

In an essay called “Listening to the Sea Breathing,” she recounts an extraordinarily specific dream during a visit to OrcaLab in British Columbia’s Queen Charlotte Strait that seems to have been somehow connected to the visit of a dolphin super pod.

Peterson urges us to remember the impact the coronavirus pandemic had on the return of wild animals to their former territories as the human species sheltered in place.

She encourages us to heighten our senses and pay more attention to the world as we move through it. She even suggests that extrasensory perception may be within our reach if we are attuned enough to receive it.

“Wild Chorus” is expansive and hopeful — a transcendent read.

“Wild Chorus” by Brenda Peterson

Mountaineers Books — 240 pp — $24.95