Literature in the wild

Every morning I walk a few miles in my neighborhood, drinking in the sounds of crows and songbirds, sometimes seeing deer, and occasionally spotting a fox. But the low growl of traffic reminds me I live in the suburbs, not a wilderness. Homeowners in my development try to control nature, artfully mixing butterfly bushes, crepe myrtles, and hydrangeas among oak trees, dogwoods, and magnolias. Chemicals keep the non-native grass green and kill mosquitoes in the summer. When we say someone’s yard looks wild, it’s an insult. Still, slivers of wilderness exist in pockets, behind and between some houses, and laws about native Virginian wetlands prohibit taming such areas.

Nick Ripatrazone, who lives in America’s most densely populated state, New Jersey, writes powerfully about wilderness in his latest book. Wild Belief touches on biblical concepts, including wilderness as a place of testing and transformation, but focuses on poets and writers, including Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas McGuane, W. S. Merwin, and Mary Oliver. “Poets and prophets, united by imagination, capture the transcendent sublimity of the wilderness,” Ripatra­zone asserts. “Unconcerned with intellectual theories, they capture emotion.”

Ripatrazone describes the elusive idea of wilderness, which was not a concept in Paleolithic times but permeates the Bible. Wilderness became especially important to Americans during the beginning of the pandemic as people flocked to parks and trails, eventually creating gatherings so large that they led to closures. “Thoreau was right: we need the tonic of wildness,” Ripatrazone observes.