Rewilding the Urban Soul

by Claire Dunn

[annieb123]

Originally posted on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

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.