Customer Reviews

The Abstract Wild

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Jack Turner's "Abstract Wild" is a book that runs past most Nature or Environmental writings at full bore, surpassing the standard let's save some of it for the future motto. A former professor of Philosophy, Turner abandoned his post to concentrate on his passion... climbing, and is now a guide in Wyoming. He was prodded into writing this book as more and more people he knew realized the importance of his message.

Turner dives to the heart of the matter when it comes to the Wild, the Environment, Preservation, Conservation, etc. We as a society have become disconnected with the world at large and the Wildness at its core. This Wildness has become an Abstract concept for for most of us.

This book and a few other core titles (i.e. Abbey's "Desert Solitaire" and "The Monkey Wrench Gang" and various works by the likes of Rick Bass, Barry Lopez and Bill McKibben) would make for a very important class in the Preservation of Wildness that all students should be encouraged if not required to take.

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A Guide to my Rating System:

1 star = The wood pulp would have been better utilized as toilet paper.

2 stars = Don't bother, clean your bathroom instead.

3 stars = Wasn't a waste of time, but it was time wasted.

4 stars = Good book, but not life altering.

5 stars = This book changed my world in at least some small way.

I got this book when searching for something for my biodiversity class to read that would hook them to the subject and move them the way "Sand County Almanac" did me back in my college days. Wasn't able to read it at the time, but I picked it up this fall, thought I would read an essay at a time before bed, like I usually do with essay books. Sometime in the wee hours I realized that I had to stop reading or I would head out into the dark night and wander until I found the wilderness again. Few modern writers, or writers of any age, have so clearly and eloquently expressed what it means to love the wild, what we are about to loose, and truly why we are loosing it despite efforts to the contrary. Turner's solution is one I believe in, but rarely find seriously advocated, probably because it would work. Frankly, if you haven't gone wild, you may not "get" this book. If you want to really know what the wild is about though, read this book and if you like the sound of things, go seek it out. If you are wild, this will be one of the few books on the topic you can stand to read these days. I haven't been so enlightened since I read "The Practice of the Wild" by Gary Snyder. Five stars means a great book. Some books are beyond that, this is one for the ages.

An outstanding book that will have special relevance to anyone who has had an experience in the wild that brings an awakening of spirit. Exactly the kind of experience not attainable at Disney World, which is the author's point. He has remarkable answers to questions that trouble any environmentally-concerned person. Questions raised in the exceptional book "Wild Echoes" by Charles Bergman, are answered in the Abstract Wild. Anyone who has been put down for having strong views about man's destructive nature will find solace in this book. Turner knows it is OK to rant for wilderness, and only if we all rant together can we possibly make a difference.

This book hits the nail on the head regarding what we think we believe and with how we really live and work in this world. Chapter 2, "the Abstract Wild: a Rant" and chapter 4, "Economic Nature" are particularly valuable, but then so is the rest. This is a book that makes the reader face the reality of our world and what we are making of it on no uncertian terms. If you think that we can reconcile the comfort of modern life with the real world you need to read this book. The world we are loosing is very different from the "abstract wild" we believe we are "saving". The book makes the strongest justification and argument for the spiritual reality of the world over the "economic reality" that we seem to think we must compromise with.

The "Abstract Wild" belongs in every hand that hold such writings as Thoreau, Leopold and Abbey important. Much like Thoreau, it holds up a mirror that all of us, including the "mainstream" environmentalists should look on. It reveals an image that is difficult to rationalize away, showing some hard truths that we all must heed if we wish to truely change, both individually and as a culture. The "Wildness" that is the salvation of the world is more than a slogan, a momentary protest or a cause. It's Reality in the true meaning of the word.

Jack Turner's "Abstract Wild" is a collection of essays, screeds really, the result of taking a lifelong climbing bum, guide really, a wacked out college philosophy professor, a naturalist, and a Buddhist of good intention until the duck pate or a plate of steamed shrimp lands in front of him, and rolling all these people into one cranky mountain poet living under the guise of an Exum Mountain guide -- the premiere climbing guides of the Tetons.

The essays, some personal and some philosophical, one that is better on economics that any essay by any economist I have ever read, define what wildness truly is and what abolitionism in the name of the environment is all about. Not humorless zero tolerance, but rather, how one takes a powerful ecological conscience and translates that into how we live.

He might be our century's John Muir, although that might involve a book tour which would involve Turner leaving his little cabin in the woods and dealing with airports and cabs and subways. Probably not. So meet him through his book. It is worth it. Turner is like a melding of Ed Abbey and Gary Snyder, fierce, provacative and playful, always trying to set you off.

In fact, when I met him eight years ago, the last time he was in Washington, DC, he told my wife and me, "Get out of this town. You are going to lose your souls." My wife wanted to hit him with a pot, having just made us all a wonderful dinner after putting in a 12 hour day in an environmental career." I laughed, thinking of Thoreau writing that he had never learned anything of value from his elders -- a shot directed at one of the great mentors of all time -- Ralph Waldo Emerson. These brilliant cranks do this as a form of teaching, they set us off, pop us on the head with a 2 x 4 to make us see the world in a different light.

I now run Greenpeace US and, eight years later I am still in Washington, DC, still holding onto my soul, but rereading "Abstract Wild" every year just to be sure.

At last a book which captures far better than anything I've seen in print the real sense of "wild" not in the stagnant, sanitised way of zoos or even of gardens but rather in the experience of real vulnerability felt in the presence of something awe inspiring and possessing of an energy which flows freely and powerfully when the human being just "lives". Inadvertently Turner expresses the same thoughts often stated by others such as David Bohm : ever creative nature, the holomovement, David Abram : spell of the sensuous and it reminds one at times of the silent activity so easily perceived in Haiku poetry. His experience at first seeing Indian rock paintings holds the mind with its strength and vitality, especially so when he notices his own very human qualities as the energy of that moment seems to fade thereby expressing the need of the person to experience each moment as new rather than as a memory. Similarly the very personal experience of being hunted by a mountain lion is not lost on anyone who even vaguely remembers what it was to be alive, say as a child or the sudden and unexpected feelings of "how good it is to be alive" that would assult one at times in his/her life. Unfortunately these things are rare and only vague memories for most of us. As such Turner awakens this in us again and the desire to feel as a human being once more.

"From the summits of the Tetons, I see to the west a mosaic of farms scaring the round hills and valleys, as though someone had taken a razor to the face of a beautiful woman."

In THE ABSTRACT WILD, Turner gets to the heart of what it means to be wild, a concept that is often thrown around, but rarely defined. It has been overstepped again and again because nobody really thought that the concept of being wild was important. But as Tuner shows us in THE ABSTRACT WILD, it is the heart of being natural.

Turner found something out there in the wilderness that our society has lost. He had an intense personal experience that opened his eyes to the aura of the environment around him, to the sacred, to the holy, to what it meant to be wild. He found a critical link in our conservation ethic that has been "overstepped" because nobody knew to look there. Once we start to see the importance of the wilderness being self-ordered, autonomous, and wild. We will start to understand what needs to be done to effectively start protecting our natural environment. "As Stephen Jay Gould wrote, 'We cannot win this battle to save species and environments without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as well-for we will not fight to save what we do not love'"

Simply put, this is the best book of "environmental" or "nature" essays written in the past 25 years. In fact, were it not for two or three weaker essays, I would call it the best book since "A Sand County Almanac." Read it!

This book is such a welcome deviation from so much "environmental" judgmentalism, finger-pointing, and theoretical whining. Its basic premise is: how can we relate to the "wilderness" we wish to preserve when we don't even spend time with it? And: what, in fact, are we working to preserve?

There is a rawness and intensity to how the writer expresses himself that has a marvelous feeling of sincerity about it. He is not afraid to point up the shadow side of the very ecological programs he subscribes to. Reading, I had the feeling of sitting next to him by a campfire somewhere, or in front of the fireplace in his home in the Grand Teton, hearing him talk from the heart about things that concern him deeply.

This is a book about wildness. Not about the wilderness where it exists. More importantly this book is about you and me and how we think about wilderness.

I have single-handed my sailboat to Catalina Island many times and watched the dolphins with fascination as they played at the bow of my boat. You cannot help feeling a sense of connection with them as you watch them only a few feet away as they share their ocean with you.

As a young man I stood on top of Mt Whitney and looked out across the many mountain ranges of the High Sierras.

I purchased this book at the visitor's center while camping in Anza Borrego State Park in California. What an appropriate place to buy this book!

I have visited many National and State Parks and National Monuments crowded with people.

So, I have experienced the wildness that Jack Turner talks about and I have also visited the controlled spaces of our current managed wilderness areas that this book addresses.

Because the author has traveled in wilderness areas worldwide and a former philosophy professor from Cornel University and a long time climbing guide in the Tetons of Wyoming this book is an absolute jewel - well researched, eloquently written and straight from the heart.

What can I now write to get you to read this wonderful book? It is more than his opinion. It is a way of thinking about the world we live in and the true meaning of wilderness.

I sometimes end a review with some original poetry. Unfortunately, I am still trying to get my mind around this book. It is such great food for thought.

Here is a quote from the book:

"Do you want to change the world?
I don't think it can be changed.

The world is sacred.
It can't be improved.
If you tamper with it, you will ruin it.
If you treat like an object, you will lose it.
.....
The Master sees things as they are,
With out trying to control them.
He let's them go their own way,
and resides at the center of the circle."

Lao Tzu

Yes, this reads like a Zen koan. Don't meditate on it too long -read this book and then keep it in your backpack or sea bag.