My entire life has been one big search for “the meaning of life.” Where do we come from, why are we here, and where do we go when we die? John Muir taught that “the clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness,” so I took his advice and started exploring. I learned that by practicing meditation and the art of mindfulness in Nature we can connect with the life all around us. The lessons we learn in the wild can help us tap into the sacred mystical dimension of this extraordinary natural world in which we live and share with the entire biosphere.
The Insurgency of the Spirit taps mutli-disciplinary methodologies of post-colonial biblical scholarship and anthropology, liberation theologies, indigenous studies, grief/trauma research, and nature-meditation writings to shape a constructive retrieval of the animist Jesus. The vision that emerges is one that sets forward an Earth-loving Jesus who challenges Christians in particular to mobilize against the destructive relationship that exists between imperial religion and political systems.
In an effort to make sense of the deaths in quick succession of several loved ones, Kathleen Dean Moore turned to the comfort of the wild, making a series of solitary excursions into ancient forests, wild rivers, remote deserts, and windswept islands to learn what the environment could teach her in her time of pain. This book is the record of her experiences. It’s a stunning collection of carefully observed accounts of her life—tracking otters on the beach, cooking breakfast in the desert, canoeing in a snow squall, wading among migrating salmon in the dark—but it is also a profound meditation on the healing power of nature. To learn more about the author, visit her website at www.riverwalking.com.
Introduction: into the wildness / Gavin Van Horn -- Wisdom of the wild. Wildfire news / Gary Snyder ; Conundrum and continuum: one man's wilderness, from a ditch to the dark divide / Robert Michael Pyle ; No word / Enrique Salmón ; The edge of anomaly / Curt Meine ; Order versus wildness / Joel Salatin ; Biomimicry: business from the wild / Margo Farnsworth ; Notes on "up at the basin" / David J. Rothman -- Working wild. Listening to the forest / Jeff Grignon and Robin Wall Kimmerer ; The working wilderness / Courtney White ; The hummingbird and the redcap / Devon G. Peña ; Losing wildness for the sake of wilderness: the removal of Drakes Bay Oyster Company / Laura Alice Watt ; Inhabiting the Alaskan wild / Margot Higgins ; Wilderness in four parts, or why we cannot mention my great-grandfather's name / Aaron Abeyta -- Urban wild. Wild black margins / Mistinguette Smith ; Healing the urban wild / Gavin Van Horn ; Building the civilized wild / Seth Magle ; Cultivating the wild on Chicago's South Side: stories of people and nature at Eden Place Nature Center / Michael Bryson and Michael Howard ; Toward an urban practice of the wild / John Tallmadge -- Planetary wild. The whiskered god of filth / Rob Dunn ; The akiing ethic: seeking ancestral wildness beyond Aldo Leopold's wilderness / John Hausdoerffer ; On the wild edge in Iceland / Brooke Hecht ; The story isn't over / Julianne Lutz Warren ; Cultivating the wild / Vandana Shiva ; Earth island: prelude to a eutopian history / Wes Jackson ; Epilogue: Wild partnership: a conversation with Roderick Frazier Nash / John Hausdoerffer.
Provocative essays by revisionist historians, scientists, and cultural critics explore the connection between nature and American culture, analyzing how it is packaged and presented at places such as Sea World and the Nature Company stores.
In the context of the postdigital age, where technology is increasingly part of our social and political world, Avatars, Activism and Postdigital Performance traces how identity can be created, developed, hijacked, manipulated, sabotaged and explored through performance in postdigital cultures. Considering how technology is reshaping performance, this timely collection reveals how we engage in performance practices through expanded notions of intermediality, knotted networks and layering. This book examines the artist as activist and producer of avatars, and how digital doubles, artificial intelligence and semi-automated politics are problematizing and expanding our discussions of identity. Using a range of examples in theatre, film and internet-based performance practices, chapters examine the uncertain boundaries of networked 'informational selves' in mediatized cultures, the impacts of machine algorithms, apps and the consequences of digital legacies. Case studies include James Cameron's Avatar, Blast Theory's Karen, Ontroerend Goed's A Game of You, Randy Rainbow's online videos, Sisters Grimm's Calpurnia Descending, Dead Centre's Lippy and Chekhov's First Play and Jo Scott's practice-as-research in 'place-mixing'. This is an incisive study for scholars, students and practitioners interested in the wider conversations around identity-formation in postdigital cultures.
Today’s world urges us to look outward for life’s meaning and purpose—but our inner lives are the true source of the deeper knowing that gives life meaning. In Finding the Wild Inside, Marilyn Hagar encourages readers to discover that creative place inside us that knows there is more to life than we are currently living—the less rational part of ourselves that she calls our “wild inside,” a place most of us have not been taught to navigate. Using stories from her own life—from infancy through caring for her elderly parents as an adult—Hagar shows us how, through playing in the arts, contemplating our nightly dreams, fostering our intuition, and reconnecting to Mother Nature, we can discover our own authentic wild self. Opening to this part of ourselves, she teaches, isn’t so much a search as it is a listening, a curiosity, a playfulness, and a learning how to think symbolically, all of which can be cultivated. Most of all, it takes a willingness to lay down our egos and open ourselves to the awe and wonder of the wild universe of which we are a part. Instructive and inspiring, Finding the Wild Inside is a blueprint to living life from the inside out—and, in doing so, walking a path of authenticity and belonging.
From the author of the New York Times bestseller that defined nature-deficit disorder and launched the international children-and-nature movement, Vitamin N (for “nature”) is a complete prescription for connecting with the power and joy of the natural world right now, with 500 activities for children and adults Dozens of inspiring and thought-provoking essays Scores of informational websites Down-to-earth advice In his landmark work Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv was the first to bring widespread attention to the alienation of children from the natural world, coining the term nature-deficit disorder and outlining the benefits of a strong nature connection--from boosting mental acuity and creativity to reducing obesity and depression, from promoting health and wellness to simply having fun. That book “rivaled Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring” (the Cincinnati Enquirer), was “an absolute must-read for parents” (the Boston Globe), and “an inch-thick caution against raising the fully automated child” (the New York Times). His follow-up book, The Nature Principle, addressed the needs of adults and outlined a “new nature movement and its potential to improve the lives of all people no matter where they live” (McClatchy Newspapers).Vitamin N is a one-of-a-kind, comprehensive, and practical guidebook for the whole family and the wider community, including tips not only for parents eager to share nature with their kids but also for those seeking nature-smart schools, medical professionals, and even careers. It is a dose of pure inspiration, reminding us that looking up at the stars or taking a walk in the woods is as exhilarating as it is essential, at any age.
An Artforum Best Book of the Year A Legal Theory Bookworm Book of the Year Nature no longer exists apart from humanity. Henceforth, the world we will inhabit is the one we have made. Geologists have called this new planetary epoch the Anthropocene, the Age of Humans. The geological strata we are now creating record industrial emissions, industrial-scale crop pollens, and the disappearance of species driven to extinction. Climate change is planetary engineering without design. These facts of the Anthropocene are scientific, but its shape and meaning are questions for politics—a politics that does not yet exist. After Nature develops a politics for this post-natural world. “After Nature argues that we will deserve the future only because it will be the one we made. We will live, or die, by our mistakes.” —Christine Smallwood, Harper’s “Dazzling...Purdy hopes that climate change might spur yet another change in how we think about the natural world, but he insists that such a shift will be inescapably political... For a relatively slim volume, this book distills an incredible amount of scholarship—about Americans’ changing attitudes toward the natural world, and about how those attitudes might change in the future.” —Ross Andersen, The Atlantic
