The Wisdom of Wilderness: Experiencing the Healing Power of Nature [Paperback]

Gerald May was one of our most gifted writers on the spiritual life -- wise, grounded, humorous, honest, realistic, and courageous. This, his final book, will surely become known as one of his very best. Here, with graceful prose and vivid stories, he extends his explorations of spirituality into the natural world, showing how experience of the world's wilderness can help us embrace the wilderness within all of us. I wish Jerry were still among us to brighten this dark world with his spiritual, emotional and intellectual brilliance. But he could not have left us a finer literary legacy than "The Wisdom of Wilderness".

It was September, and the long stretch of Lake Michigan island beach was deserted except for a herd of snowy swans cruising along the shore at sunset. I had just read THE WISDOM OF WILDERNESS by Gerald May before my solo backpack trip. As I took my last swim of the season and marveled at the beauty all around me, his words echoed. Wilderness, he believed, is not just a place. It is also a state of being. The inner wilderness, he wrote, "is the untamed truth of who you really are."

May knew he was dying as he penned THE WISDOM OF WILDERNESS, a book drawn from his journals and thoughts over the last decade of his life. Drawn to nature because of his deep longing for something he couldn't articulate --- but knew was wrapped in a yearning for God --- he spent many nights out of doors in a state forest close to his home. It was here that May's life was irrevocably changed, as he learned about himself and about God's presence.

The idea of going to the wilderness to learn spiritual truths is as old as humankind. It's even biblical. Think of Jesus going to pray in the desert, or the prophets who found metaphors in creation. Many of the early church fathers and mothers found solitude and a special sort of communion with God when they set themselves apart for a time in the wilderness. Although May uses language that may be difficult for Christians to get past (for example, he meets something called "The Power of the Slowing," which he calls a feminine presence), if we put aside some of our preconceptions about God, May allows us to see how God might work through nature to teach us truths about ourselves and work healing in our lives.

Like any of us who love to be alone in the outdoors, May writes of his battle with fear. Fear of the dark. Fear of wild animals (his encounter with a bear is one of the best moments in the book). Fear of other humans who might wish him ill. Letting himself deeply experience fear has an unexpected result: gratitude.

Indeed, this willingness to let ourselves feel deeply is at the heart of the book. May, a respected theologian and psychiatrist (ADDICTION & GRACE), had spent a lifetime helping people learn to "cope" with their feelings. In THE WISDOM OF WILDERNESS, he rethinks the idea of "coping" and wonders if in fact it isn't better to feel our emotions deeply. May wants us to look deeper at our own nature. Are we awake to our lives? Are we paying attention? What are we missing? What are we afraid of?

When we allow ourselves to feel deeply, we open ourselves up to pain. And there is pain in the book. May spends a chapter looking at pain through his story of a tortured turtle, a chapter that no one will be able to read without flinching. More importantly, May is aware of his own mortality as he battles cancer. This lends a terrific poignancy to his words. When dying, one is aware of what is most important. May doesn't have time to trivialize.

As one who loves field guides and putting names to the birds, flowers and clouds I see, I particularly appreciated May's chapter, "The Name of the Eagle," although I'm not sure I agree with him completely. He believes that part of our desire for naming things is a need for power or control (or he says "subjugation.") "A...more respectful way is not to give a name but to discover it," he writes. This chapter gave me plenty of food for thought, since I consider learning the names of things a form of respect and appreciation --- like learning the names of the people you want to know better. I appreciate his challenging words, however. Although I will continue to enjoy naming things, I'll remember his caution the next time I'm poring over my field guides, spending more time looking for a name than getting to know the birds or the flowers for themselves.

Perhaps most importantly, May reminds me to be attentive --- to stay awake to my life. As he writes in the preface: "Your experience may be very different than mine. Just as you find your wilderness in your own place, you will have your own experience of Presence there. But my guess is that you will be touched and moved by Something that is in you but yet not completely you, something dynamic, surprising, and very, very wise....it is your wilderness calling." I plan to listen.

--- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby

Gerald May, well known author of Addiction and Grace, was dying as he wrote this book. He leaves it to us as a last testament of the wisdom he gained not from his teachers, peers or patients, but from the wilderness within him and without. Recounting expeditions into nature over a five-year period, he shares with us what he experienced in the woods and on the water, how nature's lessons healed him finally at a deep level of his being, and how they might also heal us. He and we are one with that nature, not separate from it, whether to tame or destroy or protect. Nature herself heals the rift that can arise between her and us, and led him to accept its force within himself -- even fear, imperfection and dying -- exactly for what it is. May acquires a Zen-like openness to all things, an appreciation and acceptance of all things just as they are, a delight in and gratitude for all things, and of the force and power behind them. "Love," he writes, "is the pervading passion of all things that draws diversity into oneness, that knows and pleads for union, that aches for goodness and beauty, that suffers loss and destruction.... Love is the energy that fuels, fills, and embraces everything everywhere. And there is no end to it, ever." His insights are many: great and small, clear and subtle, well-known to solitary venturers into the wild and strikingly origianl with him. His perception into his own deep feeling is acute and his writing is exquisite. This book is a gift for us all, a special gift for those who appreciate nature or have, like May, spent time alone in it.