| Title | : | Wildness: Relations of People and Place |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 022644483X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780226444833 |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 272 |
| Publication | : | Published March 31, 2017 |
This book charts a different path. Exploring how people can become attuned to the wild community of life and also contribute to the well-being of the wild places in which we live, work, and play, Wildness brings together esteemed authors from a variety of landscapes, cultures, and backgrounds to share their stories about the interdependence of everyday human lifeways and wildness. As they show, far from being an all or nothing proposition, wildness exists in variations and degrees that range from cultivated soils to multigenerational forests to sunflowers pushing through cracks in a city alley. Spanning diverse geographies, these essays celebrate the continuum of wildness, revealing the many ways in which human communities can nurture, adapt to, and thrive alongside their wild nonhuman kin.
From the contoured lands of Wisconsin’s Driftless region to remote Alaska, from the amazing adaptations of animals and plants living in the concrete jungle to indigenous lands and harvest ceremonies, from backyards to reclaimed urban industrial sites, from microcosms to bioregions and atmospheres, manifestations of wildness are everywhere. With this book, we gain insight into what wildness is and could be, as well as how it might be recovered in our lives—and with it, how we might unearth a more profound, wilder understanding of what it means to be human.
Wildness: Relations of People and Place is published in association with the Center for Humans and Nature, an organization that brings together some of the brightest minds to explore and promote human responsibilities to each other and the whole community of life. Visit the Center for Humans and Nature's Wildness website for upcoming events and a series of related short films.
Wildness: Relations of People and Place Reviews
-
The beauty of this collection of essays begins from the very start, as the editors set the scene of making the final edits to the volume: "Sitting on the porch of Mi Casita [Aldo Leopold's New Mexico cabin], looking east to the high mountain edge of the Rio Grande watershed, we took in the view of afternoon lightning storms gathering above the Sangre de Cristo Mountains..." Each essay that follows is a small masterpiece in itself, crafted by some of the finest contemporary minds in the fields of ecology, conservation, and environmentalism. The theme running throughout examines the intersection between humans and nature. Two diverging theories are prevalent: the first being that of wildness expressed as humankind absent from nature, and the other with the idea that there is truly no wild left due to human intervention in the wilderness. The essays vary widely in tone, content, and setting, exploring areas such as Wisconsin's Driftless area, the woodlands of Iceland, and a nature center amidst Chicago's urban south side. One of the better essays that stood out included Laura Alice Watts' "Losing Wildness for the Sake of Wilderness," which takes the side of actually advocating for an existing commercial development within the wilderness in the case of the Drake's Bay Oyster Company. And Aaron Abeyta's piece, "Wilderness in Four Parts," gives a recollection of his great-grandfather and saving a herd of sheep from death in a snowstorm, and is interspersed with powerful and moving poetry.
This collection is sure to have broad appeal to students and proponents of environmentalism, with each piece worthy of much contemplation and discussion. It deserves a place on the shelf with the finest environmental literature of the day. -
The intersection of people and nature has been from my earliest memories something of great profundity to me. From the very first essay, this collection pulls you into the more complicated than you think relationship between people and wild. I loved every page of it.
-
This collection of short essays is informative and inspiring. There is a good range of perspectives, many of them poetic imaginings of how we heal the rupture between nature and self.
-
This book is amazing!
