Zen of the Wild

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.