Nature Book Reader June 2020 - Flipbook - Page 108
A Nature Book Reader
KATE REW
Kate Rew is founder of the Outdoor Swimming Society
Wild by Jay Griffith
Compelling, poetic and
passionate, Jay Griffith’s
startlingly original book
picks you up by the scruff
of your neck and transports
you, like a small bare animal,
into worlds where icebergs
squeak hiss and whistle,
where jungles sweat and
twine, where fish walk,
huskies howl and the
immensities of deserts
panic people.
What I love most is the
staggering realness of it,
the unorthodox femaleness
of it. Nature writing is full
of men in various stages of
intellectual detachment.
Griffiths – a learned and
remarkable mind – sweats
and grunts and lusts and
yearns as much as any other
animal and her baseness
somehow raises the spirits.
This book will change
your mental geography,
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but that isn’t why you
should buy it. It’s because
even as she gives you the
epistemologies and maps
and charts with which we try
and tame the world, that little
animal in you wants to revel
with her to the very end as
she celebrates our feral sides,
our wildness of mind and
untameable spirits. What is
also remarkable about it is
that it hasn’t won a host
of literary prizes.
Further Reading
The Highest Tide
by Jim Lynch
The Sea Around Us
by Rachel Carson
