Customer Reviews

Naked in Eden: My Adventure and Awakening in the Australian Rainforest

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Just as her book's title holds layered meaning, so does Robin Easton's engaging personal story.

"Naked in Eden" is an unforgettable adventure tale, mesmerizing in its bold and revealing honesty. Easton holds nothing back as she relates how she reclaimed herself in a most unusual way. Twenty-five years old, mildly autistic, and alone with her new husband in a foreign country half-way around the world from her home and all that was familiar, she found the greatest treasure in life among glistening moments of pure beauty.

Exciting, impactful, and awe-inspiring, this nail-biting account of a period in her life is filled with breathtaking scenery, danger, humor, passion and compassion, wisdom, and the most profoundly beautiful love. It's an unusual adventure story, a journey of self-discovery, and filled with universal wisdom.
Easton's delightful story is powerful and moving, and it's filled with astounding moments of courage, strength, honesty, vision, and woven throughout her tale are shining nuggets of cautions, lessons, and wisdoms for the world. If readers look beyond the surface, they will find universal messages they can apply for themselves, life lessons for growth and awareness about what it means to live a life that's in absolute harmony with everything and everyone: all our world's living beings.

This hard-to-put-down book is an easy read, with dialog and descriptions that flow as smoothly as an undisturbed river. My recommendation, however, is to read it as slowly as you're able, just so you don't miss any hidden nuggets of juicy revelations about life. I couldn't do that, though. I just finished it, and will turn right around and read it again, for the deeper messages, to catch all the subtleties I know I didn't allow to register the first time, gleaning more insights from this most unusual and uplifting love story about life and the world we live in.

I can't recommend this book enough, and I eagerly await Easton's next tale!

A final word--or two:
My admiration for this woman is unbounded. I teasingly remarked to a friend that we should clone Easton, and he said, "Cloning her is a great idea. It could transform life as we know it overnight." I totally agree! The world needs more who approach life and live it as she does: fearlessly and wholeheartedly, and eagerly seeking the best within and sharing it widely.

Easton is a worthy role model for all of us.

In the book, Robin Easton discovers herself and her full capabilities as a woman explorer in Queensland's northeastern coast, at a place called Cape Tribulation in the Daintree Rainforest of Australia. Robin Eason grew up on Lake Pennesseewassee in Norway, Maine, and in the book, she went to Australia for adventure and to find herself. She went with her husband Ian, a native Australian whom she met in Salt Lake City, when they were both in their mid-twenties.

The story's account is filled with local color, interesting local language and vibrant scenery from Australia. Robin is looking for the courage that lies within herself, and she finally finds it - in the eyes of predator animals intent on possibly making her their lunch! There is non-stop excitement, and the reader will barely be able to catch his or her own breath as the story moves from one exciting escapade to another.

Ian is a "character" within a character. He is first a bit of a wild card, as he is from a well-heeled family and always up for getting and going away. Robin at first seems to be his side-kick, then she moves tenderly into the role of his protector and savior all rolled into one. In Australia, Robin discovers that she is much tougher than she had originally thought of herself. Through all of the adventures, injuries and mishaps in the jungle, Robin perseveres. I admire her commitment to embrace the natural world around her, and to decide to "really live" for once in her life.

She understands that her journey is to reverse the disconnection we all feel with society and with each other. She understands that as a human, with higher thoughts, emotions, dreams and goals - she is not "above" or separate from any (or all other) forms of life. Her prior attitude of superiority at the top of the food chain has made her arrogant and vain, selfish and greedy. The journey into the rainforest showed her how her spirit connects her o all living things - where the animals can hear her most intimate thoughts, the predators respect her countenance, and she realizes that they allow her to live another day by their grace - and not the other way around.

I recommend this book to any age and audience.

Robin is the real deal, and you are shortchanging yourself if you miss this book.

On the surface, Naked in Eden is about Robin's exploits in the Australian rainforest that will keep you at the edge of your seat in anticipation of her next adventure. But underneath, with Robin as our unwitting guide, this book conveys the possibility for all of us to realize that we are one with life, that we are nature itself, infinite wisdom, and that there truly is no separation.

Robin's words ooze with truth and insight. She enters the rainforest depleted and disillusioned and emerges healed and whole beyond her wildest dreams. Her enthusiasm is contagious. One cannot help but be transformed by the clarity with which she describes the limitless nature of our very existence.

Whether communing with a dying bandicoot or sharing the journey of a butterfly breaking out of its pupa, Robin's writing makes the world of the rainforest come alive, almost as if you were right there with her.

Robin is a living example of awakening in form. Her book is ecstatic, intimate, mesmerizing, earthy. Read it slowly and let yourself be transformed in ways you never thought were possible.

Robin Easton was autistic. Dying. Dangerously disconnected from life.

With nothing left to lose Robin walks away from society, and almost every modern convenience, and heads into the Australian rainforest with her Aussie husband. Her journey takes her through mud, leeches, flooding rivers, and she has to confront deadly snakes, stinging trees, crocodiles, poisonous insects and her fear. She survives encounters with lethal snakes, feral pigs and other wild creatures, and learns to live as "part of" the rainforest and not "apart from" it.

Robin sheds her fear and her clothes and walks naked into the jungle where she begins to heal.

This book's compassionate and down-to-earth insight is written for anyone who has ever dreamed that nature might revitalize and transform his or her life. Naked in Eden will inspire both those who are already living closely with nature and those who prefer to observe her from their window. It reminds us that beyond the bubble of our technology lives an intelligent, interactive, healing and natural world, a world that awaits our return.

Eden transports readers to an ancient and forgotten existence, to a world in love with itself, a world beyond television, internet, McDonald's, Disneyland and a week long trip to Yellowstone National Park. This story helps readers remember who they are and what they need to nurture their spirits. It helps them remember that they are a vital part of something much larger, something infinite and loving, something they cannot live without.

The big question in Eden is: what would happen if we were to establish a relationship with Earth as a living being instead of a natural resource? The author believes that we would awaken from the numbing affects of modern society, heal from the harried fragmentation of too many demands, and begin to respond to, be nourished and loved by the natural world around us. This adventure is highlighted with love, inspiration, humor, vulnerability and fascinating wildlife facts.

Eden is the first non-scientific book about someone's life in the world's oldest tropical rainforest, the Daintree Rainforest of Australia. In this case the first "someone" is a woman. Robin Easton is one of the few people alive today who can write this story. She roamed through this primordial forest before the invasion of paved roads, houses, resorts, youth hostels, restaurants and tourist attractions. Each year our remote areas diminish and there are fewer people who remember Earth's great wildness, fewer people who can tell stories like Eden. Robin Easton is the 21st Century John Muir, who also realized that everything is connected to everything else.

A wild adventure, a primal discovery of what it is to be human and a part of the intricate fabric of life, writing so vivid that one nearly sees the rainforest and its creatures through one's own eyes, a profound journey toward awakened spirituality - Naked in Eden is this and more.

Humans are animals, but the animal side seems to be long lost. "Naked in Eden: My Adventure and Awakening in the Australian Rainforest" tells the story of Robin Easton as she sought to connect with nature along with the love of her life, Ian. Living in a remote area in the rainforest, they find that their life, while different, was more refreshing than anything else they had experienced. "Naked in Eden" is a spiritual look at the human animal and its place in nature.

Wow! Words can barely describe the incredible journey this book took me on. Naked In Eden brings us into Robin's inner sanctuary and is like partaking in a holy sacrament. The sacrament is Nature and our tremendous opportunity to be healed by the living organism of the earth we tread upon, but rarely meet personally.

Robin's soulful and healing journey brings us to an awareness of our own innate capacity for connection and healing, our own longing for the wild in us.

Robin chose to face life full force in a soul-inspired, gentle manner, all the while courageously confronting every fear we humans commonly sweep under the carpet, hoping they will magically disappear. She faced dangers in the wild that most of us never confront - both in nature and in her inner world.

My heart hung on every word and laughed and cried over and over. Her writing style is both outrageously hilarious and poignantly heart wrenching. Her compassion and love is food for the soul. I didn't want it to end.

Naked In Eden inspires, it beckons us to go to our core, to come home to our true selves. We come to understand the love and wisdom in nature and how nature personally loves us, the earth, the animals, the trees, the water, the rocks all LOVE us. Can we rise to the calling and love them in return?

Naked In Eden is a masterpiece of indescribable beauty!

I picked this book up on a whim. The cover looked very sensuous, so I opened to the first page and ...Bang! It grabbed hold of my eyeballs, and did not let go until I turned the last page. I could not put this book down, and the story lingers with me. While Easton's story happens in Australia, the events, people and insights prompted me to look at the whole world in a different way, like I'd been asleep to the amazing life happening under my very nose. One of my favorite passages in the book involved a snake and a mother bird, and her telling of the events gave me an appreciation for life AND death as part of a continuum in the world, rather than the life OR death dichotomy that we often perceive.

I was amazed at how she could write a book so romantic and colorful, with action packed intensity. I tend to like adventure and sci-fi stories, and have to confess that I have not read many adventure stories written by women. I'm somewhat embarrassed to admit that I am the stereotypical guy who doesn't really enjoy "chick-flick" kinds of movies and romance novels. Cripes, Easton sure changed that. She took me through a whole range of action and emotions as she presented dream-like panoramas of the Australian wild populated with all manner of people, plants and animals. I saw danger and beauty all at once. I saw life and death all at once. I have not had a story strike me like this in a long time, enough so that I think I will have to read the whole book again.

An amazing book of a story of an amazing woman and her journeys. I think that the word "amazing" simply sums it up.

This very compelling personal story is the chronicle of re-awakening into a world very close to nature in a part of the world where it could be entirely possible to experience such a life-changing scenario. The author describes with respect and clarity how her journey through - and with - the trees in the amazing Australian Rainforest helped her return to a very basic and personally satisfying existence where she can discover and live her own sense of values, dispelling any greed or dishonor that have become the norms for so many in the world's population. Her story transcends fantasy - focuses on reality - and offers hope for a future of honest and peaceful living lightly on our planet and with ourselves.

I honestly can't say enough about how exceptional this book is. Not only is the story totally captivating, but Robin is the most gifted writer I have ever known. You won't be able to put it down.