Will Harlan: Voices of the Wild
Our species is the problem — and the solution — to most of the world’s woes. That’s why the best nature writing is ultimately about people. We crave stories that reconnect us to the natural world — not through flowery descriptions or preachy diatribes — but through living, flesh-and-blood examples of courage and commitment. Here are a few of my favorites. Each of these books has gritty, gutsy characters who stand their ground and speak for the wild. – Will Harlan
The Unconquered
By Scott Wallace
Journalist Scott Wallace joins an expedition venturing deep into the Amazon to protect the Arrow People — one of the last uncontacted tribes on earth. It’s a contemporary Heart of Darkness with an expedition leader, Sydney Possuelo, who is even more complicated than Kurtz.
Blood of the Tiger
By J. A. Mills
An undercover wildlife investigator stands in the way of Chinese billionaires banking on the extinction of the last wild tigers. She sacrifices her marriage, changes careers, and risks her life to expose a plot to turn tigers and other endangered species into livestock.
The Last American Man
By Elizabeth Gilbert
A modern-day pioneer living nearly self-sufficiently on a wild reserve in Appalachia, Eustace Conway embodies the ideals of American masculinity — ruggedness, courage, and independence. However, those hard-fought ideals have a price. Liz Gilbert shows us the tired, lonely man behind the bravado. A tough, buckskin-clad maverick hunts for the one thing missing from his mountain refuge: love.
Into the Wild
By Jon Krakauer
Chris McCandless is either a stupid kid or self-reliant hero. As soon as he graduates college, he gives away all of his savings and wanders the wild, seeking adventure and an authentic relationship with the land — until he finds himself starving to death alone in the Alaskan wilderness. Barely able to lift a pen, he scribbles this final message, which continues to haunt and shape my own life: “Happiness only real when shared.”
Encounters with the Archdruid
By John McPhee
McPhee masterfully captures the nuances and complexities of the most influential modern environmentalist, David Brower, by shadowing him on close-combat crusades to protect America’s last wild places. But don’t expect classic confrontations with battle lines clearly drawn; Brower is far more kaleidoscopic. Like Brower himself, the book’s strength is in its subtlety, with finely drawn characters exquisitely presented in shades of gray.
Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
By Janisse Ray
Ray’s hardscrabble upbringing in a South Georgia junkyard is an unlikely start for an environmental luminary, but the rusted scrap heaps of her childhood are chock full of raw, resourceful characters — including an authoritarian father who locks his family in a closet and a snuff-dipping coon hunter who introduces her to the wild woods. Ray weaves her own story into the razed red-clay landscape and leads a rebellion to save the South’s last longleaf pine forests.