Mary Thompson - Reclaiming the Wild Soul: How Earth’s Landscapes Restore Us to Wholeness

Reclaiming the Wild Soul touches on so much that makes us more deeply human. But even more, we are invited into a new way of being human. Mary Reynolds Thompson identifies the most powerful qualities of our Earths great landscapes. She then magically guides us back into a nearly lost realm where we truly feel that our imagination, our inner lives, and our physical selves are an integral expression of the planet herself. To go to the Earth for guidance, we simultaneously go inward to our deeper self and outward to the Great Self of oceans, rivers, deserts, grasslands, mountains, and forests. It is here, as the author writes, we learn to live the questions, rather than rush the answers. Reclaiming the Wild Soul reminds us that beyond the flurry and chaos of our cyber-age, there is a primary yet forgotten terrain where we may seek guidance, healing, and wisdom. In doing so, we retrieve our wilder, deeper selves. I read this book with a sense of gratitude. It is a beautiful, passionate, and trustworthy handbook for deeper transformation.

Lauren de Boer,

Executive Editor, EarthLight,

a magazine of ecology, cosmology, and spirituality.

Mary Reynolds Thompsons book works simple magic to bind our broken souls back into full-round rapport with the more-than-human terrain. And as the land restores our sanity, were empowered to work with new clarity to replenish the many-voiced vitality of the animate earth.

David Abram,

author of The Spell of the Sensuous

Reclaiming the Wild Soul leads us on a journey of exploration, through imagery, poetry, story and creative imagination, to connect back to the five archetypal landscapes in Nature, and reconnect to our own inherent Nature.

Angeles Arrien,

author of The Four Fold Way

Mary Reynolds Thompson has written a lyrical and potent field guide to reclaiming the wild soul. Her intimacy with Nature and her longing for the reader to experience such intimacy is the golden thread that weaves through every page. Imagine a world in which all women claimed the forests, mountains, oceans, and deserts within our own psyches. It would surely lead us all True North in our quest for personal and planetary wholeness. In Reclaiming the Wild Soul, the forests and mountains, the deserts and the oceans, the rivers and the grasslands find their voice. Once heard, we can never forget what they have to say. May we all follow the summons and embark on such a journey. Marys field guide lights the way.

Clare Dakin,

Founder, TreeSisters

With ingenuity and subtlety, Mary Reynolds Thompson guides us in ways both old and new to enter Earths archetypal wildscapes and allow them to infuse us and make us whole again, fully human. Woven with enchanting stories and wise counsel, Reclaiming the Wild Soul lavishly supports us, at this time of global crisis/opportunity, to return, emboldened, to Earth and to our own human wildness.

Bill Plotkin,

author of Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche

With the urgency of Rachel Carson and the lyricism of Terry Tempest Williams, Mary Reynolds Thompson brings startling clarity to the myriad ways the earths archetypal landscapes mirror our own pain, struggles, resources and triumphs. Simultaneously self-help and a courageous call to action, Reclaiming the Wild Soul is a vibrant and necessary addition to the literature on ecopsychology, Gaia consciousness, and the thinking persons interior life.

Kathleen Adams,

Director, Center for Journal Therapy, Inc.;

Editor, Expressive Writing: Foundations of Practice

The future of religion and of the planets health are both connected integrally with our gaining a new sense of reverence for the Earth. Mary Reynolds Thompsons writing provides a creative, fresh approach to this spiritual task. Through language that connects our inner depths with natures mysterious and challenging beauty, she invites us to deepen our allegiances to our own true nature, to nature itself, and to the source of both.

The Rev. Fletcher Harper,

Executive Director, GreenFaith

Reclaiming the Wild Soul is a gateway into the great spiritual journey of our time: that of nondual consciousness, also called spiritual ecology. These moving stories and images and poetry of Reynolds Thompson will carry you into a fresh, though ancient, realization: the deserts and forests and mountains are there in the universe, and yet simultaneously, they are vibrantly alive in the depths of our souls.

Brian Swimme,

author of The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos

and co-author (with Thomas Berry) of The Universe Story.

Reclaiming the Wild Soul is a must read for anyone on a joyous path to wholeness. Mary Reynolds Thompsons superb book takes us back to our deep roots in nature where our dreams and destiny intertwine. Her book ignites the soul with the earths powerful wisdom and connects each of us to our deepest, wildest, wisest selves.

Terry Laszlo-Gopadze,

editor of The Spirit of a Woman

What an elegant concept for a bookto engage the reader in the process of surrender, to the light, the texture, the inward quality of the landscape. This is what real writing isan extended active imagination, a dialogue with our surroundings. It is as much about opening and surrender as it is about craft. It comes down to this: If we cant be captured by world, find our home in it, acknowledge that we are of it, that our minds have been produced by it, then what have we to say that really matters? This book will guide you back to that connectionwhere the inner world and the outer world meet and simultaneously enrich each other. Reynolds Thompson provides a graceful initiation into an I /Thou relation with the Earth. She is someone Id like to walk with, into the Dark Wood.

Valerie Andrews,

author of A Passion for this Earth.

Mary Reynolds Thompson asks simple yet profound questions in exploring our connection with nature, and helping us reclaim our wild soul. And reclaim that soul, we must, if we are to find a way towards an Earth that can sustain itself in the face of human consumption and population. She writes in a way that makes you care about this planet, see its beauty on deep levels, and revel in precious moments of discovery and mystery.

Stephen Altschuler,

author of The Mindful Hiker

In moments of illumination our souls expand, affirming that we are part of something far more spacious than our separate selves. Mary Reynolds Thompson provides doorways to those experiences, when our lives are forever changed, and our alignment with the soul of nature is sealed forever.

Ginny Anderson,

author of Circling San Francisco Bay.

As we face threats to our ecology that are so large we can hardly imagine them, Mary Reynolds Thompson invites us to slow down and connect more deeply with the earth so that we have a solid, rich, physical grounding to begin from. Reclaiming the Wild Soul should be required reading for all our politicians and policy makers.

Ellen Bass,

award-winning poet

Mary Reynolds Thompsons work takes people out of themselves and into Nature in delightful, insightful, and heart changing ways. She is a wise voice for wilderness and teaches her readers how to venture into the landscapes and connect to our true earth selves. Im so glad shes guiding us.