Verena Staël von Holstein was born in Rendsburg, Germany, in 1959. She studied surveying and hydrography and worked as a computer programmer and in the hydrographic surveying department. She is a homemaker with two children, and lives at a watermill in Lüneburger Heide, a heathland region in Northern Germany. A student of the work of Rudolf Steiner, from childhood onwards she has been able to perceive the etheric and astral realms in human beings and the natural world. She has learned over many years to train her metaphysical perceptions so that communication with nature spirits takes place almost as a matter of course. She receives answers spiritually in the form of patterns, ideas and sometimes also images, and translates them into human concepts. She is the author of several books, including Nature Spirits of the Trees and What They Want to Tell Us.