Rewilding the Urban Soul
searching for the wild in the city
by Claire Dunn
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Pub Date 1 Jun 2021 | Archive Date 31 Aug 2021
Scribe UK | Scribe
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Description
We’re a famously nature-loving nation, yet 86 per cent of Australians call the city home. Amid the concrete and the busyness, how can we also answer the call of the wild?
Once upon a time, a burnt-out Claire Dunn spent a year living off the grid in a wilderness survival program. Yet love and the possibilities of human connection drew her back to the city, where she soon found herself as overscheduled, addicted to her phone, and lost in IKEA as the rest of us. Given all the city offers — comfort, convenience, community, and opportunity — she wants to stay. But to do so, she’ll have to learn how to rewild her own urban soul.
Join Claire as she sits by and swims in the brown waters of the Yarra River, forages for undomesticated food in the suburbs, and explores many other practices in a quest for connection. To make our human hearts whole, she realises, we’ve all got to pay attention and learn to belong to our cities — our land. This is where change begins. For ourselves and for the world.
Advance Praise
‘In this beautifully written book, Claire Dunn encourages the reader to welcome back the fox woman with her untameable pelt and unfamiliar woody scent, to cherish numinous encounters, to fall in love with the world, to be enchanted once again. She inspires the possibility to wildness, both inner and outer, for all those living within city limits and beyond. Rewilding the Urban Soul will stir people’s souls, for sure.’
Miriam Lancewood, author of Woman in the Wilderness and Wild at Heart
‘In Rewilding the Urban Soul, Claire asks an important question, “How can I expect us to fall in love with the world in the way that’s so needed if it’s dependent on going bush for a year? No, it has to be possible, right where we are.” A cliffhanger from that point on, Claire’s wonderful storytelling, research, and perspectives make it clear it’s not only possible, but it’s incredibly healing and fun! This book is essential for our times.’
Jon Young, author of Coyote’s Guide to Connecting with Nature and What the Robin Knows
‘Love makes us move to the city. Duty makes us stay. But how do we create a liveable habitat for our bodies and spirits and relations in these murderous places? You might find the answer in this book.’
Tyson Yunkaporta, author of Sand Talk
Available Editions
| EDITION | Ebook |
| ISBN | 9781925938937 |
| PRICE | US$37.99 (USD) |
| PAGES | 336 |
Links
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Annie B, Reviewer
Rewilding the Urban Soul is a compelling look at the connections to nature which humans need to thrive and connect with their surroundings presented by Claire Dunn. Released 1st June 2021 by Scribe, it's 336 pages and is available in paperback and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links and references throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately.
There have been so many studies and research showing that living a life divorced from nature and wildness increases stress and has a negative effect on mental and physical health. The need for nature connection has led to movements to change the way we educate (more wilderness and outdoor time for preschoolers through university students), green spaces in our workplaces, even "prescriptions" for outdoor and nature/wild time for everything from stress to depression to physical issues such as autoimmune flare-ups.
This book does a good job of showing how (and why) we can and should incorporate more nature into our daily lives and through multiple conversational essays and encounters with naturalists, enthusiasts, friends, housemates, and others, she makes a compelling argument - when we are removed from our natural environment, we lose something essential to ourselves and we are the poorer for it.
The book includes a lot of rumination about how a paradigm built on barter and foraging can change the entire system from a cash/credit-based society. There's also valuable epilogue written during the early-to-middle pandemic, showing how the author and her friends and housemates were impacted and coped with the enforced isolation and restrictions.
Although there's quite a lot of good information here about foraging, wildcrafting (not a how-to manual, but learning about it), mentoring, our interconnections and more, there's also some information which might be potentially distressing to some readers. The last chapter was difficult for me to read in some ways, since it contains a fair bit of blood and guts (in the author's words), and also because I personally felt there was some lack of respect one aspect of her description of skinning a fox (to be used for fur).
Five stars, with the codicil that it's not a happy fuzzy book for vegans. This would be a good choice for public or school library acquisition, fans of natural history and nonfiction, or the home library.
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.
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