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From the author of The Zen of Climbing and The Craft of Bouldering, a manifesto for a new approach to connecting meaningfully with the wildness around and within us.In recent years, we have woken up to the crucial role that nature plays in our well-being. As we live increasingly urbanized lives, we seek out wilderness and green space in times of hardship and turmoil, or simply for our leisure.
Weaving together ideas from spirituality, neuroscience, religious philosophy and art history, Francis Sanzaro argues that we obscure opportunities for real connections through our attachments, our anxieties, and simply through our egos. We rarely observe nature without subconsciously filtering out the parts that don't fit into our perfect snapshot.
To foster a genuine connection with the natural world, and to better protect it, we must embrace its contradictions as well as the surface beauty. Through deeper engagement with our environment, we can discover the wild within ourselves, too.
List of contents
Swimming Naked Just Past Midnight on a Tuesday—Preface
Our Good Friend Adam
Liquid Trance
When the Student is Ready, the Shit Plant Appears
The Bigger The Beauty
Microtopia
Night Run
Big Nature
The Stuff of Nature
Attacking Planes with Arrows
The 1181 Saint
Soul Doctors
Cooking with Pathology
Our Biophillic Phantom Limb
Fuzzy Metrics
Starved Out of Plenty
Hippos in Alaska
Stimuli vs Sensatio
Wisdom of the Body
You Can’t Ignore Motherhood
Fully In a Body
When the Whole World Feels Like Leather
The Inescapable
Impersonal Forces
Skillful Means
Magrogan: A Cosmic Parent
Hidden Assumptions in Buddhism
Manicured Lawns in the Amazon
Self as Coin
Concept, Conception, Conceive
Nature in History
Hiking Mt Sinai
Puddle Run
To Be in a Body
Homeostasis
Sucking the Pus
In the Toxin is the Cure
Mono No Aware
The God of Harmonia
A Tale of Two Images
Nature’s Lack of Personality
Let it Realize Itself
The Formless Obsession
Luxury Assumption
The Experience Economy
Porcupines and Wine
Coda: The Sweet Spot
About the author
Francis Sanzaro PhD is a climber, academic, speaker, and the author of books on philosophy, climbing, athletic theory and comparative religion. His essays, poetry and fiction have appeared in The New York Times, Outside, Huffington Post, Climbing, Adventure Journal, The Baltimore Post Examiner, Continental Philosophy Review, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Rock and Ice, among a dozen others. His books include The Boulder: A Philosophy for Bouldering; and Society Elsewhere: Why the Gravest Threat to Humanity Will Come From Within. He appeared at TEDx Ascend in Colorado speaking on approaches to risk and our relationship with the natural world.
