Rewild Yourself: Making Nature More Visible In Our Lives

Shirley J.                    Adult Non-Fiction  Nature & Wildlife         Bringing Nature Into Every Day

Rewilding Yourself: Making Nature More Visible In Our Lives by Simon Barnes    208 pages

Too often we go through our day to day lives with the natural and animal world alive and all around us but we are too focused on work or whatever our minds are dealing with at home, in relationships, etc. to truly stop and enjoy the abundance of life and nature going on all around us.  We hear the sounds of traffic and construction instead of the birdsong coming from up above us in the tree we just passed.  Simon Barnes offers tips to bring back the natural world, the living creatures hiding in plain sight all around us, to restore the wonder they offer and the peace they bring us if only we open our senses to all that is as we share space on this planet earth together.   A beautiful insight into how to reclaim the serenity of the wild world that we often forget about because we no longer notice it.  As children we were aware of all the sights, sounds, smells, things to get down and touch for a real sensory experience, even the taste at times (- ever pick blackberries and eat them from a wild growing patch?)  as we play outside (is that a lost thing now with all the video entertainment available?)  Have we lost the ability to look and see?  Does the ability to listen and hear dull amid the jumble of noise we experience in a day to the point we no longer select to hear the whir of a hummingbird?    Simon Barnes suggests getting back to the basics of actually looking for all the wonders that can be found in the wild and wonderful things surrounding us.  Once you open yourself to all the life that is right in front of us as we venture outside you will see how much you have been missing.  He suggests taking binoculars along for bird watching and identification.  You will be amazed by all the different birds you can see, even on occasion a falcon, even in the cities, even more crows are coming into cities as their rural habitats shrink.   He discusses various species of moths, butterflies, etc. and where with a bit of observation you will be fascinated by all the variety of flying and crawling insects you can see, there is even a species of chameleon that when frightened/threatened can enlarge its head to look like a snake!  He talks about everything from fish to fowl from reptiles to mammals and the insect and plant world some requiring binoculars some not.   A book of how to find the awe in all our living world.  I recommend this book to middle schoolers on up.   He does use the off descriptive cuss word now and then but not often enough to be offended by.