The Zen of the Wild

Auteur

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. Francis lives in Carbondale, Colorado.

Texte du rabat

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.

Contenu

Swimming Naked Just Past Midnight on a Tuesday—Preface

Our Good Friend Adam

Liquid Trance

When the Student is Ready, the Shit Plant Appears

The Bigger The Beauty

Microtopia

Night Run

Big Nature

The Stuff of Nature

Attacking Planes with Arrows

The 1181 Saint

Soul Doctors

Cooking with Pathology

Our Biophillic Phantom Limb

Fuzzy Metrics

Starved Out of Plenty

Hippos in Alaska

Stimuli vs Sensatio

Wisdom of the Body

You Can’t Ignore Motherhood

Fully In a Body

When the Whole World Feels Like Leather

The Inescapable

Impersonal Forces

Skillful Means

Magrogan: A Cosmic Parent

Hidden Assumptions in Buddhism

Manicured Lawns in the Amazon

Self as Coin

Concept, Conception, Conceive

Nature in History

Hiking Mt Sinai

Puddle Run

To Be in a Body

Homeostasis

Sucking the Pus

In the Toxin is the Cure

Mono No Aware

The God of Harmonia

A Tale of Two Images

Nature’s Lack of Personality

Let it Realize Itself

The Formless Obsession

Luxury Assumption

The Experience Economy

Porcupines and Wine

Coda: The Sweet Spot