Roxanne reviews This One Wild and Precious Life by Sarah Wilson.
Part travelogue, part philosophy musings, part minimalist lifestyle guide, Sarah Wilson’s new non-fiction book This One Wild and Precious Life is the perfect book to buy a loved one in desperate need of unplugging from an internet and/or work frenzied existence.
Wilson’s hikes across the world are delicately portrayed as mental health therapy, a cure for what she and other sociologists and psychologists are calling ‘moral loneliness.’ Acedia, as it is also called, is a feeling of loss or apathy, especially common now during our ongoing pandemic dilemma.
If you’ve ever wanted to go to Crete, Sydney’s Royal National Park, The Julian Alps, Topanga Canyon, you can go (!) with Wilson and her spare 15 kilogram backpack (33 pounds for us Americans) which she lived out of for up to six months of the year. Her forest bathing will awaken your wanderlust for nature.
Wilson’s ironic background, former editor of Australian Cosmopolitan Magazine who subsequently developed an autoimmune disease, brought her an epiphany of self-healing from within via adoption of healthier habits, rather than a self-pity wallow.
I enjoyed every page of this book, discovering touching quotes by Rumi and poet David Whyte as well as being fortified by Wilson’s ‘waste not, want not’ philosophy.
Roxanne will be facilitating a Zoom Mindful Reading Book Club discussion of This One Wild and Precious Life on January 25th at 6 p.m. Click here for more information.
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