Return: A Journey Back to Living Wild

In this stunning memoir, beloved internationally acclaimed earth advocate chronicles her journey to reconnect with the earth, offering a model for how we all can nurture the wild around and inside ourselves.

In 1991, twenty-four-year-old Lynx Vilden crawled out of a sweat lodge covered in mud, her face streaked with tears, and whispered a promise to the earth: “I will love you and cherish you, I will learn how to live and share what you teach me.” That promise became Vilden's life purpose: to return to the ways of our oldest ancestors, to a simpler life, and to listen deeply to Earth and what she has to say. Over the next thirty years, Vilden's mission would lead her far from the city streets and punk bands of London and Amsterdam where she was raised, on a long and winding journey spanning continents and seasons, and filled with indigenous wisdom, Stone Age hunting skills, and important lessons from nature.

In this illuminating memoir, Vilden shares the joys that await all of us when we reconnect with the earth, when we recognize what has been lost, and understand what we gain by meaningfully returning to our roots and become rewilded. Return is a glimpse into her extraordinary world-from stories about mentoring Silicon Valley millennials at her Stone Age immersion in rural Washington State to adventures traveling among Sami reindeer herders in Arctic Sweden to detailing the intricacies of just how to pursue and survive a wild lifestyle inspired by Stone Age humans.

This extraordinary debut ultimately invigorates our hunger to renew our bonds with the earth and awaken our wildest, most primal selves.

"1141759163"
Return: A Journey Back to Living Wild

In this stunning memoir, beloved internationally acclaimed earth advocate chronicles her journey to reconnect with the earth, offering a model for how we all can nurture the wild around and inside ourselves.

In 1991, twenty-four-year-old Lynx Vilden crawled out of a sweat lodge covered in mud, her face streaked with tears, and whispered a promise to the earth: “I will love you and cherish you, I will learn how to live and share what you teach me.” That promise became Vilden's life purpose: to return to the ways of our oldest ancestors, to a simpler life, and to listen deeply to Earth and what she has to say. Over the next thirty years, Vilden's mission would lead her far from the city streets and punk bands of London and Amsterdam where she was raised, on a long and winding journey spanning continents and seasons, and filled with indigenous wisdom, Stone Age hunting skills, and important lessons from nature.

In this illuminating memoir, Vilden shares the joys that await all of us when we reconnect with the earth, when we recognize what has been lost, and understand what we gain by meaningfully returning to our roots and become rewilded. Return is a glimpse into her extraordinary world-from stories about mentoring Silicon Valley millennials at her Stone Age immersion in rural Washington State to adventures traveling among Sami reindeer herders in Arctic Sweden to detailing the intricacies of just how to pursue and survive a wild lifestyle inspired by Stone Age humans.

This extraordinary debut ultimately invigorates our hunger to renew our bonds with the earth and awaken our wildest, most primal selves.

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Return: A Journey Back to Living Wild

Return: A Journey Back to Living Wild

by Lynx Vilden

Narrated by Lynx Vilden

Unabridged — 9 hours, 9 minutes

Return: A Journey Back to Living Wild

Return: A Journey Back to Living Wild

by Lynx Vilden

Narrated by Lynx Vilden

Unabridged — 9 hours, 9 minutes

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Overview

In this stunning memoir, beloved internationally acclaimed earth advocate chronicles her journey to reconnect with the earth, offering a model for how we all can nurture the wild around and inside ourselves.

In 1991, twenty-four-year-old Lynx Vilden crawled out of a sweat lodge covered in mud, her face streaked with tears, and whispered a promise to the earth: “I will love you and cherish you, I will learn how to live and share what you teach me.” That promise became Vilden's life purpose: to return to the ways of our oldest ancestors, to a simpler life, and to listen deeply to Earth and what she has to say. Over the next thirty years, Vilden's mission would lead her far from the city streets and punk bands of London and Amsterdam where she was raised, on a long and winding journey spanning continents and seasons, and filled with indigenous wisdom, Stone Age hunting skills, and important lessons from nature.

In this illuminating memoir, Vilden shares the joys that await all of us when we reconnect with the earth, when we recognize what has been lost, and understand what we gain by meaningfully returning to our roots and become rewilded. Return is a glimpse into her extraordinary world-from stories about mentoring Silicon Valley millennials at her Stone Age immersion in rural Washington State to adventures traveling among Sami reindeer herders in Arctic Sweden to detailing the intricacies of just how to pursue and survive a wild lifestyle inspired by Stone Age humans.

This extraordinary debut ultimately invigorates our hunger to renew our bonds with the earth and awaken our wildest, most primal selves.


Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"Lynx Vilden's life has been an atavistic quest to find, and perhaps even recover, some fundamental meaning and substance that still lurks in our most elemental human nature. Here, Lynx has shared her life's work– her relentless passion to explore, identify, and recapture the organic and symbiotic relevance of the human experience. In Return, this remarkable woman has faithfully sought and truly found the marrow in the bone."  — Joe Hutto, author of Illumination in the Flatwoods, The Light in High Places, and Touching the Wild

“ …an exploration of what a closer relationship with the natural world can offer us…a spirited debut. A rigorous, colorful portrait of true wilderness living.” — Kirkus

“[A] mesmerizing and ethereal autobiography mixed with aspects of spirituality…” — Booklist

"Return is a story of a remarkable woman who is living the Stone-Age ways. For Lynx, the past, present and future are intertwined. By learning the skills of our ancestors, she reminds Mankind of our forgotten abilities."  — Miriam Lancewood, author of international bestseller Woman in the Wilderness

Kirkus Reviews

2023-01-24
A memoir that serves as “an exploration of what a closer relationship with the natural world can offer us.”

British-born Vilden grew up in London and rural Sweden, and she lived in a series of “squat houses” in Amsterdam as a teenager. She also resided in a small Swedish village at the edge of a forest, where she had a job in theater. Now, in north-central Washington state, she inhabits a world of “peace, stillness, and silence,” living with the seasons and from the land. Described as “a primitivist, the last modern hunter-gatherer, or a woman outside of time,” for the past 20 years she has run workshops to teach students “how to live with the land in a respectful and conscientious manner.” At the school she founded, Living Wild, she offers a rugged immersion program in Stone Age living. In her spirited debut book, Vilden melds memoir with a detailed recounting of one Stone Age immersion project, when she and her clan challenged themselves to live in the wilderness as hunter-gatherers using nothing but primitive tools. The participants’ motivations varied: Some (Vilden created composites of her students) sought escape from what they saw as the falseness of civilization; others looked for spiritual solace; some, a balm for their emotional fragility. To prepare, they had to learn skills such as starting a fire without matches, building a shelter from foraged wood, making bows and arrows, fishing, hunting, and processing the animals they killed. “With each project I was learning, recognizing essential foundational truths,” Vilden admits, “but the list seemed endless.” As clan members quickly realized, Stone Age living was precarious and exhausting. Weather could turn life-threatening, and most critically, they risked starvation without enough calories to survive, especially from meat and fat. Besides chronicling a season at Living Wild, Vilden reports on her pilgrimages to the Himalayas, Egypt, and Namibia; her several marriages; and the joy of her daughter’s birth.

A rigorous, colorful portrait of true wilderness living.

Product Details

BN ID: 2940175933124
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date: 04/11/2023
Edition description: Unabridged
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