A WILD PATH

Nature offers the author a spiritual refuge.

Educator, musician, and wilderness guide Wood, author of Deep Woods, Wild Waters, gathers short essays reflecting on his deep connection to nature. As a child, because unrecognized dyslexia held him back in reading and math, he felt bad about himself. However, on fishing trips with his grandfather and summers at a lake, he felt “successful and okay.” A late diagnosis of ADHD helped him understand why he still is “scattered and disorganized, forgetful and unfocused,” with difficulty “following directions or completing tasks or remembering what the tasks were in the first place.” He has since decided, though, that ADHD is hardly a disorder, but rather an asset for attentiveness to the wild—to otters, bears, wolves, his friendly neighborhood cardinal, and trees. “Of all the teachers I have known,” he writes, “I have found very few more wise or helpful than trees. Their patience knows no bounds.” Wood responds to the “spirit and meaning of place,” musing on the joys of a cabin in the woods, the spectacle of the Northern Lights, and his experiences as a guide—all give him a “cause for awe, humility, and a profound appreciation of mystery.” Canoeing has been a special pleasure. “I have loved the quiet of mist-shrouded mornings and golden evenings,” he writes, “the sense of being embraced by the wilderness and the entire natural world, the canoe and its paddler a part of every aspect of the landscape and the waterscape, the wind and the sky and the weather.” The author has “long believed that the world is filled with teachings and teachers, messengers perhaps—if we are awake and aware and prepared to listen. Those messages nourish humankind’s capacity for joy, even in the face of struggle and loss.”

A warm evocation of nature’s gifts.