From the Foreword (Excerpt)

Cass Adams has done us an invaluable service in compiling this anthology. Here, together for the first time, are the voices of wilderness advocates, teachers and guides, supporters of deep ecology, pioneers in the emerging field of ecopsychology, nature writers and poets sharing their love for what is wild within and around us. Their stories reflect decades of experience and insight affirming the role of wilderness in personal transformation...

The Soul Unearthed shows how wilderness areas and wild places help us recover realms of our inner lives —realms in which ego and the demands of society have not restricted our experience of innate guidance or our intrinsic compassion. These are spiritual realms, the sacred. This is not “nature mysticism” as some have called it—it is nothing so abstract. The capacity to experience the natural world as sacred is one of the ordinary privileges of being human. It is our birthright. We need only transcend the limits of human-centered thinking. Beyond those limits lies the wild—the far boundaries of home...Slow down, pay attention, wait. Learn to listen and to look. Become friends with the silence and trust the answers you are given. Return again and again. Learn to defend the wilderness that you love...

To those who seek personal renewal and reconnection with wild places within and without, this book offers direction. It suggests that we all share in an earthly consciousness, that we have a place in the world, a place we do not have to earn, but a place we are bom to because we are part of this planet. It offers community with those seeking intimate contact with wild world, wild self. In the end it does what few books do. It reminds us to put it down, leave it behind and go outside. Don't settle for just reading maps; take the trip!

—Elizabeth Roberts

Wilderness teacher, guide, and coeditor of Earth Prayers and Life Prayers