The 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 during our leisure time. In the process of exploring and understanding more about the benefits of being in nature, many of us have taken up swimming, forest bathing, cycling, hiking and running in the open air. But when we spend this time in the wild are we really connected to it?
Francis Sanzaro argues that we often obscure opportunities for real connection through our attachment to screens, our anxieties about our "everyday" lives, or simply through our egos. When we observe nature, we rarely do so without subconsciously filtering out the parts that don't fit into the perfect snapshot we crave.
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.

Francis Sanzaro (Ph.D.) is a climber, academic, speaker, and the author of books on philosophy, climbing, athletic theory and comparative religion. His essays, poetry and fiction have appeared in The New York Times, Outside, Huffington Post, Climbing, Adventure Journal, The Baltimore Post Examiner, Continental Philosophy Review, Vol. 1 Brooklyn and Rock and Ice, among a dozen others. His books include The Zen of Climbing; The Craft of Bouldering; and Society Elsewhere: Why the Gravest Threat to Humanity Will Come From Within. He appeared at TEDx Ascend in Colorado speaking on approaches to risk and our relationship with the natural world.