From the Epilogue (Excerpt)

It is important to me to have offered you — the reader — a book that is solid and accessible. While I had a general sense of the broad messages and personal tone 1 was wishing to impart through this collection, coming to the final chapter titles and their contents was, at times, somewhat arduous, daunting, frustrating, and, almost always, quite mysterious. The primary challenge I kept encountering was that so many of the contributions overlap. The chapters themselves have been retitled, rearranged, and restructured again and again.

Wilderness is like that—circular, unpredictable, moving, and changing. Nature weaves around itself in an unending breath of life. Wilderness is  fluid and flowing and fathomless. That which is truly wild spills over the edges—onto our kitchen floors, into our love lives, through the sidewalk cracks, and in the form of dandelions and emotional outbursts.

One way to return to a lifestyle that is more organic and harmonious with the whole of nature is to get outside more often, to get out of the squareness of your comfortable home and routines, to let the unpredictability of wildness touch the soulful longings within. Wilderness is innate to who we cure. You do not have to go far to find wildness, only as far as your own beating heart and the joy you find in life...

Drawing from the expertise of the book's contributors, the Appendix of Wilderness Resources gives the reader help in finding support to connect skillfully and mindfully with wilderness. The Appendix lists wilderness guides, educators, schools, and environmental organizations that have a unique, grounded, and holistic approach to nature....

I hope The Soul Unearthed will support you in your journey into the vast unknowns of wildness. But more importantly, put down your books, get outside, and go for a walk.

With love for all that is wild and free,

Cass Adams