Return - by Lynx Vilden (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

In this stunning memoir, beloved internationally acclaimed earth advocate chronicles her journey to reconnect with the earth, offering a model for how we all can nurture the wild around and inside ourselves.

In 1991, twenty-four-year-old Lynx Vilden crawled out of a sweat lodge covered in mud, her face streaked with tears, and whispered a promise to the earth: "I will love you and cherish you, I will learn how to live and share what you teach me." That promise became Vilden's life purpose: to return to the ways of our oldest ancestors, to a simpler life, and to listen deeply to Earth and what she has to say. Over the next thirty years, Vilden's mission would lead her far from the city streets and punk bands of London and Amsterdam where she was raised, on a long and winding journey spanning continents and seasons, and filled with indigenous wisdom, Stone Age hunting skills, and important lessons from nature.

In this illuminating memoir, Vilden shares the joys that await all of us when we reconnect with the earth, when we recognize what has been lost, and understand what we gain by meaningfully returning to our roots and become rewilded. Return is a glimpse into her extraordinary world--from stories about mentoring Silicon Valley millennials at her Stone Age immersion in rural Washington State to adventures traveling among Sami reindeer herders in Arctic Sweden to detailing the intricacies of just how to pursue and survive a wild lifestyle inspired by Stone Age humans.

This extraordinary debut ultimately invigorates our hunger to renew our bonds with the earth and awaken our wildest, most primal selves.

This memoir is an invitation to remember what we've lost and a guide to what we can find:

• A Thirty-Year Journey: Follow Lynx Vilden from the punk scenes of London and Amsterdam to the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, chronicling the promise she made to the earth and how she kept it.
• Stone Age Immersion: Go inside Vilden's school, where she mentors everyone from Silicon Valley millennials to military veterans in the arts of hunting, foraging, and thriving in the wilderness.
• Indigenous Wisdom: Travel alongside Lynx as she learns from Sami reindeer herders in Arctic Sweden and other First Peoples, exploring ancient knowledge in a modern world.
• A Philosophy of Rewilding: Discover a powerful model for renewing our bonds with the natural world, reconnecting with our roots, and awakening our most primal selves.

Review Quotes

"Lynx Vilden's life has been an atavistic quest to find, and perhaps even recover, some fundamental meaning and substance that still lurks in our most elemental human nature. Here, Lynx has shared her life's work- her relentless passion to explore, identify, and recapture the organic and symbiotic relevance of the human experience. In Return, this remarkable woman has faithfully sought and truly found the marrow in the bone." - Joe Hutto, author of Illumination in the Flatwoods, The Light in High Places, and Touching the Wild

" ...an exploration of what a closer relationship with the natural world can offer us...a spirited debut. A rigorous, colorful portrait of true wilderness living." - Kirkus

"[A] mesmerizing and ethereal autobiography mixed with aspects of spirituality..." - Booklist

"Return is a story of a remarkable woman who is living the Stone-Age ways. For Lynx, the past, present and future are intertwined. By learning the skills of our ancestors, she reminds Mankind of our forgotten abilities." - Miriam Lancewood, author of international bestseller Woman in the Wilderness