
In the Eye of the Wild

As in the tale, if we establish a regular practice of intentional solitude, we invite a conversation between ourselves and the wild soul that comes near to our shore.
Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés • Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
My soul turns into a tree, And an animal, and a cloud bank. Then changed and odd it comes home And asks me questions. What should I reply? —Hermann Hesse, “Sometimes”
Bernie Krause • Wild Soundscapes: Discovering the Voice of the Natural World, Revised Edition
Wilderness scares us because it is unknown, indifferent, dangerous, yet it is an absolute need to us; it is that animal otherness, that strangeness, older and greater than ourselves, that we must join, or rejoin, if we want to stay sane and stay alive.
Ursula K. Le Guin • Words Are My Matter: Writings on Life and Books
some American Indian tribes send young men out on “vision quests.” These men leave their names and their childhoods back at the hearth fire and go into the wilderness alone, surviving as best they can until Something Happens. They aren’t told what the Something will be, only that they’ll know it when they experience it. It may be a dream, a storm,
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