Wild: An Elemental Journey
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Cover of 1st edition | |
| Author | Jay Griffiths |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Travel literature |
| Publisher | Tarcher |
Publication date | 2006 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Pages | 374 in 1st edition |
| ISBN | 978-1585424030 |
Wild: An Elemental Journey is a 2006 book about travel in Earth's wildernesses by the British writer Jay Griffiths.
Jay Griffiths is a British writer. She read English Literature at Oxford University. She has written for the London Review of Books and contributed to programmes on BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 and the World Service. As a journalist, she has published columns in The Guardian, The Ecologist, Orion, and Aeon.[1] Her non-fiction books include Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time (1999), Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape (2013), and Tristimania (2016).[2]
Book
Publication history
Wild was published by Tarcher in the United States in 2006 and by Hamish Hamilton in the UK in 2007.[a] Penguin Books issued a paperback version in 2008.[3] It was published in Korean in 2011.[4]
Synopsis
Wild describes a seven-year odyssey to wildernesses representing the five traditional elements of earth, ice, water, air and fire, the connection between human society and wild lands. Earth is the Amazon rainforest; ice is the Canadian Arctic; the Indonesian island of Bajo, near Sulawesi, is water; the Australian outback is fire; and West Papua's montane forests represent air.[5]
It is also an intellectual travel,[5] a journey into wild mind, as Griffiths explores the words and meanings which shape people's ideas and experience of wildness, the wildness of the human spirit.[6] The book includes the description of drinking ayahuasca with shamans in the Amazon, as a treatment for depression, and discusses shamanism, nomadism and freedom. Chapters describe journeys to the Arctic, to Australia and to the freedom fighters of West Papua.[7][8]