Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World

The twenty-five women writers Kathryn Aalto introduces share a yearning, a need to be embraced by the natural world. They reveal their poetry and their lives, in individual eloquence, words carefully measured and selected, not serendipitously plucked from the trees and the fields that nourish their messages. She has chosen the celebrate some writers known to us all and others whose voice we meet for the first time, and long-ago voices like Dorothy Wordsworth’s, unrecognized for many years though almost her brother’s equal.

Aalto refrains from mentioning collectively that almost without exception the writers have achieved a PhD, several teaching at colleges and universities, making the collection a singular experience. Like a child trying to decide on a birthday treat, readers will deliberate their favorites. Perhaps the writer’s style will determine the choice, or their background, or the places they recreated, or a parallel lifestyle. I chose without a moment’s hesitation Gretel Erhlich’s passion for the West, for Wyoming’s big sky and the rugged people who belong there. Then, too, the short reminder of Isabella Bird who in the nineteenth century strode alone across the untamed west, rented a horse, tackled the Rockies in winter, then challenged another corner of the world. And standing alone, Rachel Carson, the maverick who became a hero.

Writing Wild is exciting, inspiring, intimidating, bold, a worthy successor to Aalto’s enchanting debut, The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh.