Review: Thinking Wild

Last updated on: June 17, 2013 at 8:00 am by Niki Whiting

Review: Thinking Wild 2013-06-10T22:09:31+00:00 Niki Whiting

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Theo Grutter is man who likes to think creatively. He is a man who seeks to find the truth of every moment, every place, every interaction. He approaches each interaction with any thing – the sea, a bird, wild grass, his wife, etc – as a direct and intimate encounter. To my ears, he sounds as though he would be an amazing dinner guest, weaving stories, listening deeply, offering off-beat insights from his long life at sea, both in Sitka, Alaska and San Blas, Mexico.

I had hoped for more specifics from his life in Sitka. Sitka is a beautiful town in my homeland of SE Alaska. But specifics of place don’t seem to be the point of this book. It is the ramblings and musings and sweet old man’s mind that fill the pages of this book.

Unfortunately, when I pick up a 304 page book I do not want dinner party ramblings of man with English as his second language.

Many people will take delight in Grutter’s unconventional style. It is conversational, and I think it is because English is not his native tongue that his curious and creative use of metaphor allows fresh insight into topics that many readers of this blog will likely have considered before. However, the metaphors are often mixed or don’t quite make sense. The entire book is in dire need of editing, both for clarity and for length.

For example:

My deeper mind is born a lush Amazon with a mind-boggling wealth of capacities and designs. Millions of plug-ins are waiting for connectors. Millions of seed ideas in the making not yet ready to sprout. Billions of simultaneous happenings occurring in each soul. Yet only a completely uncommitted man, with no speck of scheming on his mirror, remains naked enough to absorb more than a spoonful of this ocean of informers. No wonder that a child while not yet tamed, trained and focused, is such a vulnerable ecstasy. Ask an elephant trainer. Training is not about learning. It is mostly about forgetting. Ask a lush river trained to become all hydropower. It must forget most of its river and riverbank population, when it is forced to squeeze through a channel and is degraded to a wallet full of kilowatt-hours. To know how green and rich my mindscape has remained, I count the plants and the animals that today have shown up in my mind.

In spite of many paragraphs resembling the one above, there are some gems in this book. In a section on ‘Listening and Seeking’ Grutter says, “Did you realize that listening is becoming an endangered act of love?” I really loved the following sentence: “How can I love the wildness of Life, if I cannot jump the garden fence around my domesticated mind and get a taste of the wild thinking outside?” There are many ideas here concerning how we loose our wild thinking through formal education, through electronic media, disconnecting with the land and each other, and through the colonization of our minds with language. These are ideas worthy of considering.

If this writing style and these ideas appeal to you, this might be a lovely book to pick up and put down as you will. There is no narrative nor any sense of linear progression. However, I suspect that most people will only get a few chapters in before putting it down and forgetting about it.

Previous Post

June 14, 2013

Being in nature

Next Post

June 18, 2013 Dreaming My Way Through The Labyrinth

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Africa Amazon Ancestors Animism Austin Boots Across Ireland Boston boundary crossing Bretagne Children Cities Community Connection Culture Detroit Druidry Earth Edinburgh Elements England Eskdalemuir Eugene experiential family Fiction Florida folklore France Glasgow Heathenry home how to build it Human Spaces imaginary landscapes Introduction Ireland Journeys Know your wild herbs Land Spirits London Maine memory lane Naturalizing Nature's Metaphors New York Poetry Remembering Ancestors Sacred Spaces San Francisco Scotland Seasons Seattle Tanzania Technology Texas the South Theory Top 10 traditions Travel Uncategorized United States video Water West Virginia Witchcraft Worlding

Select a Month August 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

How was Elijah taken up to Heaven?

Select your answer to see how you score.

After his passing Chariot of fire Carried by angels After his walk with God