We often enjoy the benefits of connecting with nearby, domesticated nature -- a citypark, a backyard garden. But this book makes the provocative case for the necessity of connectingwith wild nature -- untamed, unmanaged, not encompassed, self-organizing, and unencumbered andunmediated by technological artifice. We can love the wild. We can fear it. We are strengthened andnurtured by it. As a species, we came of age in a natural world far wilder than today's, and much ofthe need for wildness still exists within us, body and mind. T he Rediscovery of theWild considers ways to engage with the wild, protect it, and recover it -- for ourpsychological and physical well-being and to flourish as a species. The contributors offer a rangeof perspectives on the wild, discussing such topics as the evolutionary underpinnings of our needfor the wild; the wild within, including the primal passions of sexuality and aggression; birding asa portal to wildness; children's fascination with wild animals; wildness and psychological healing;the shifting baseline of what we consider wild; and the true work ofconservation. The hardcover edition does not include a dust jacket.