In 1974, twenty-four-year-old Bill Sherwonit stepped into a whole new life—deep in the Alaska wild. In this engaging essay collection, Sherwonit now recollects his adventures and trials of his more than thirty years in the Alaska wilderness. From the streets of Anchorage to wildlife preserves where wolves and bears freely roam, Sherwonit has witnessed the collision of man and nature firsthand in the untamed climes of Alaska. Living with Wildness constructs a continuum of “wildness” with Sherwonit’s lyrical writings, as he recounts intimate moments with the songbirds fluttering around his home birdfeeder and the halibut on his fishing line, as well as exciting experiences, including his close encounter with a grizzly bear and the breathtaking views of the Northern Lights in the remote North. Sherwonit discusses the cultural idea of the “wild man” and meditates on his own efforts to spiritually connect with nature, noting that “Wilderness is a place. Wildness, on the other hand, is a quality, a state of being.” A compellingly intimate and mesmerizing narrative, Living with Wildness reveals how we can engage with nature and access the wildness in our own selves.
Wildness Resonates With All In Living With Wildness Bill Sherwonit asserts that humans are born with an inherent connection to wildness and the natural world. The text resonates around Sherwonit's central question: "How do we nurture our wildness, rather than subdue and tame it?" Sherwonit posits this question in the introduction and then proceeds to create a context through which readers can begin to answer this question for themselves. His book is at once both comforting and jarring. While Sherwonit ultimately celebrates wildness, he also gives readers precise glimpses into both the benefits and costs of preserving our wild spaces. What makes Sherwonit's book particularly apt is that he has chosen to contextualize his question and ponderings largely in the place he inhabits on a day-to-day basis: Anchorage, Alaska. Sherwonit paints a distinctly different picture than songwriter Michelle Shocked's "Anchored Down in Anchorage." For each of us who call the Anchorage bowl our home, Sherwonit reminds us that we are supremely lucky to have the wildness that permeates the city. He resolutely demonstrates the significance of this connection in each essay. Sherwonit carefully articulates how wildness thrives, despite humans' attempts to thwart, negate, and destroy. He practices what he preaches and our planet would be much healthier and our lives more sustainable if we all could adopt even parts of Sherwonit's passion for embracing wildness.
Compelling essays about wildness, around us and within us As a temporarily relocated Alaskan (as well as ex-New Yorker), this book touches my heart as it reminds me of how precious my daily Alaskan experiences were. With humility, compassion, and especially humor, the author tackles chickadees and bears with equal reverence. His down-to-earth writing style helps make them simultaneously accessible to the reader as well as poignantly sacred; each intriguing and important in its own way. Although this book is based in Alaska, it is really about the wildness that exists everywhere (including within our hearts), and reinforces the idea that our daily experiences are imbued with delightful (and amazing) scenarios of the natural world if we just allow ourselves the opportunity to acknowledge its presence. This is a wonderful collection of Alaskan essays with universal appeal.
a great, beautiful and thought-provoking book Bill Sherwonit's Living with Wildness: An Alaskan Odyssey is a beautiful and thought-provoking book of essays. I very much enjoyed the way the essays captured the awesome beauty of Alaska while at the same time showed the complexity of the relationship between the wild land and the human beings living within it. There are some very sophisticated ideas that surface in the book, yet the book remains quite sensual rather than dry and overly academic. Sherwonit introduces a cast of colorful Alaskan characters that are as diverse as they are unique. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in nature writing, nature conservancy, wildlife viewing/bird watching and all those interested in finding wildness within their own city limits. If you enjoy good, sensual, thought-provoking writing, you'll enjoy this book!
A Note from the Author I'd like to offer a few thoughts to give potential readers a better idea of what to expect from Living With Wildness. The publisher's note suggests that this collection of essays "recollects the adventures and trials of [the author's] more than thirty years in the Alaskan wilderness." I've got to say that sounds pretty darn impressive. Almost makes me sound like Alaska legend Dick Proennicke, of One Man's Wilderness fame. But that's not really what the book is about. Yes, certain chapters take the reader into the wilderness. But much of the book - indeed most of the book - is about the wild nature to be found much closer to home. In fact the more I've explored and studied the nature of my adopted hometown, the more amazing I've discovered Anchorage to be.
While I ground the book in Anchorage and more remote Alaskan wildlands, the book ranges wider when considering ideas and ways of being in the world that are important wherever a reader lives. As I note in the book's introduction, as a nation we seem to be ever more separated from wild nature. And because of that, our relationship with the Earth and our planet's other beings is increasingly ruinous. How do we stay connected, whole? One answer, given by many others before me but worth repeating over and over, is that we need to pay more attention to the nature - the essence - of the places we inhabit: the seasons and weather, the shape of the land, the natural and human history, the animals and plants. And we must do so wherever we live, from remote backcountry to inner city. Paying attention is an essential step to becoming a true inhabitant, a native; it's part of the practice that poet-essayist-philosopher Gary Snyder so beautifully describes in The Practice of the Wild.
Most Americans seem to believe that true wildness is only to be found "out there," in the remote backcountry. By and large, our culture equates the two: wildness equals wilderness. Of course they're not at all the same. Wilderness is a place and, some would argue, an idea, while wildness is a quality, a state of being.
Over time I've become more interested in "wildness" than wilderness, because wildness, as Snyder and others have pointed out, is everywhere, including within us "civilized" humans. Because it's a state of being, wildness is harder to pin down than wilderness. Yet it's easy to recognize in the fierce presence of a grizzly bear, the howl of a wolf, the power of a fierce storm, the shimmer of the aurora, or even the feistiness of a chickadee. All of these things can send shivers of recognition through our body. As I note in the book, even in our high-tech, polluted world of the early twenty-first century, wildness is all around us. And within us. Our physical bodies - some might say our animal nature - our imaginations, our dreams, emotions, and ideas are wild. But in going about our busy, modern lives, we consciously or unconsciously suppress, ignore, deny, or forget our wildness.
This is one of the major points I've tried to make in the book: that we are constantly immersed in wildness - and carry wildness within us. We are, after all, animal beings. Such qualities as spontaneity, zestfulness for living, ferocity, playfulness, the feeling of connectedness with the larger world, free-spiritedness, sensuality, even the sense of the sacred when in nature, all hint at our inherent wildness. Most of us modern humans are a little bit frightened by our wild, animal nature, or anything that hints of wild (i.e., "animal") desires. I think that's why we have so many issues around such things as sexuality, eating, and death, because they bring us face to face with our wild, animal nature.
While wild nature is the central element of this book, I also hope readers will come away with a few other things. For instance: the importance of paying attention; and learning - or relearning - how to pay attention to the mysteries, magic, and miracles that are part of our daily lives, if we'll only slow down and become less busy. Also, how do we get to know a place? Because, as I note in the book - and many people before me have expressed this truth - we only value and love that which we know; and what we truly love and know we are most likely to passionately protect.
In The Abstract Wild, Jack Turner argues that "in many inner cities, here [in the United States] and in the developing world, people no longer have a concept of wild nature based on personal experience." I agree wholeheartedly with that. But I also believe it is possible to have "raw visceral contact with wild nature" wherever we live, if we take the time, make the effort, and leave ourselves open to wonder and mystery. Then the challenge becomes: how do we reinforce and encourage this wild awareness in each other, in our children? I don't have any easy answers. But I do have a story to share, one that shows some of the possibilities that I've found - and relearned - while living in a far north metropolis.
Anything Goes Trivia
Trevor
Megaton Man
