Cultivating the Wildness Within recounts two decades of woods wandering and soul-searching in the wake of Walt McLaughlin’s solo immersion in the Alaskan bush. Disorientation slowly gives way to affirmation. These interwoven and deeply personal essays explore one man’s wild urges, as well as the wildness he finds in family and friends, while considering the various ways in which humankind as a whole engages and disengages from the natural world. The prospects are both hopeful and perilous.

Walt McLaughlin has a degree in philosophy but insists that his thoughts regarding the relationship between humankind and nature arise from his extensive backcountry experiences. He has a dozen books in print, including a narrative about his immersion in the Alaskan bush, Arguing with the Wind, and one about hiking though the Adirondacks, The Allure of Deep Woods. He is also the driving force behind a small press called Wood Thrush Books. He lives in Vermont.