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The Way of Coyote: Shared Journeys in the Urban Wilds
A hiking trail through majestic mountains. A raw, unpeopled wilderness stretching as far as the eye can see. These are the settings we associate with our most famous books about nature. But Gavin Van Horn isn’t most nature writers. He lives and works not in some perfectly remote cabin in the woods but in a city—a big city. And that city has offered him something even more valuable than solitude: a window onto the surprising attractiveness of cities to animals. What was once in his mind essentially a nature-free blank slate turns out to actually be a bustling place where millions of wild things roam. He came to realize that our own paths are crisscrossed by the tracks and flyways of endangered black-crowned night herons, Cooper’s hawks, brown bats, coyotes, opossums, white-tailed deer, and many others who thread their lives ably through our own.
With The Way of Coyote, Gavin Van Horn reveals the stupendous diversity of species that can flourish in urban landscapes like Chicago. That isn’t to say city living is without its challenges. Chicago has been altered dramatically over a relatively short timespan—its soils covered by concrete, its wetlands drained and refilled, its river diverted and made to flow in the opposite direction. The stories in The Way of Coyote occasionally lament lost abundance, but they also point toward incredible adaptability and resilience, such as that displayed by beavers plying the waters of human-constructed canals or peregrine falcons raising their young atop towering skyscrapers. Van Horn populates his stories with a remarkable range of urban wildlife and probes the philosophical and religious dimensions of what it means to coexist, drawing frequently from the wisdom of three unconventional guides—wildlife ecologist Aldo Leopold, Taoist philosopher Lao Tzu, and the North American trickster figure Coyote. Ultimately, Van Horn sees vast potential for a more vibrant collective of ecological citizens as we take our cues from landscapes past and present.
Part urban nature travelogue, part philosophical reflection on the role wildlife can play in waking us to a shared sense of place and fate, The Way of Coyote is a deeply personal journey that questions how we might best reconcile our own needs with the needs of other creatures in our shared urban habitats.
With The Way of Coyote, Gavin Van Horn reveals the stupendous diversity of species that can flourish in urban landscapes like Chicago. That isn’t to say city living is without its challenges. Chicago has been altered dramatically over a relatively short timespan—its soils covered by concrete, its wetlands drained and refilled, its river diverted and made to flow in the opposite direction. The stories in The Way of Coyote occasionally lament lost abundance, but they also point toward incredible adaptability and resilience, such as that displayed by beavers plying the waters of human-constructed canals or peregrine falcons raising their young atop towering skyscrapers. Van Horn populates his stories with a remarkable range of urban wildlife and probes the philosophical and religious dimensions of what it means to coexist, drawing frequently from the wisdom of three unconventional guides—wildlife ecologist Aldo Leopold, Taoist philosopher Lao Tzu, and the North American trickster figure Coyote. Ultimately, Van Horn sees vast potential for a more vibrant collective of ecological citizens as we take our cues from landscapes past and present.
Part urban nature travelogue, part philosophical reflection on the role wildlife can play in waking us to a shared sense of place and fate, The Way of Coyote is a deeply personal journey that questions how we might best reconcile our own needs with the needs of other creatures in our shared urban habitats.
240 pages, Paperback
Published June 5, 2025
12 people are currently reading
257 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
January 27, 2023
Feeling reinvigorated to continue to connect with the “life breath”, nature, and living and non living that surround me in the city. This book can be a guiding voice as chicago continues to transform in the post industrial age. Opportunities to re-wild these city streets come every day. It’s up to us to dig deeper into our undeniable connection to nature and seize them.
September 27, 2024
This book is a love letter to Chicago and ecology. I really like the idea of reconciliation ecology - inventing, establishing, maintaining new habitats to conserve species in the places where people live, work, or play. I also fall into the trap of thinking about nature as separate from where I live as the forests or the mountains and the authors love for prairie lands is inspiring.
January 24, 2020
In terms of genres, this book combines a nature book with a travel book. In addition, it is a book about Chicago and its environs. The author, Gavin van Horn, is looking at the interactions of humans with nature and with non-humans, especially undomesticated animals, in the confines of Chicago and its metropolitan area (9-10 million people). As someone who has lived in the area for a long time, I hoped that the book would shed some light on some of my experiences with nature in our midst. The book did not disappoint.
The title brings up coyotes and lots of people I know have had experiences with them. For example, one early morning I was walking my old basset (now gone) and I saw a coyote running down the street towards us. My dog and I both froze and I was glad I had worn gloves. A brief standoff ensued after which the coyote moved on presumably towards easier prey. After I stopped shaking and got home, it did not escape me how wondrous it was to have a real predator on the streets of such a suburban community. (Just don’t leave little dogs out in the yard unattended!). Van Horn covers Coyotes right away and thoughtfully, making them a focal point of what follows. What wildlife do you cover after coyotes in Chicago? Peregrine falcons, of course. The rest of the book moves on through tracing the author’s experiences in walking around various Chicago habitats and one meets beavers, minks, and a number of different birds and smaller animals. This is lots new to learn here as well. For me, I had been totally unaware of the black-crowned night heron and will look at the grounds of the Lincoln Park Zoo differently going forward. Later chapters are a bit broader in scope covering prairie lands, the Pullman District, walking paths (the 606 and others), and the Chicago River.
These encounters with nature are mixed in with lots of thought about how to think about nature in urban setting and how to pay attention to nature all around you. This is not just a sightseeing book, although it could work that way. It is also an effort to get readers to think differently about nature and the active and very aware animals that are all around. The book is well work reading.
The title brings up coyotes and lots of people I know have had experiences with them. For example, one early morning I was walking my old basset (now gone) and I saw a coyote running down the street towards us. My dog and I both froze and I was glad I had worn gloves. A brief standoff ensued after which the coyote moved on presumably towards easier prey. After I stopped shaking and got home, it did not escape me how wondrous it was to have a real predator on the streets of such a suburban community. (Just don’t leave little dogs out in the yard unattended!). Van Horn covers Coyotes right away and thoughtfully, making them a focal point of what follows. What wildlife do you cover after coyotes in Chicago? Peregrine falcons, of course. The rest of the book moves on through tracing the author’s experiences in walking around various Chicago habitats and one meets beavers, minks, and a number of different birds and smaller animals. This is lots new to learn here as well. For me, I had been totally unaware of the black-crowned night heron and will look at the grounds of the Lincoln Park Zoo differently going forward. Later chapters are a bit broader in scope covering prairie lands, the Pullman District, walking paths (the 606 and others), and the Chicago River.
These encounters with nature are mixed in with lots of thought about how to think about nature in urban setting and how to pay attention to nature all around you. This is not just a sightseeing book, although it could work that way. It is also an effort to get readers to think differently about nature and the active and very aware animals that are all around. The book is well work reading.
January 6, 2019
This book is not about science- I expected to read about ecology/biology of coyotes in urban area based on the title, but it's not about coyotes per say.
The book contains series of essays (many of them philosophical) about relationships between "human and non-human animals' in urban areas. The author uses the Coyote (coyote deity wildly belied in American culture), Aldo Leopold (wildlife ecologist) and teaching of Tao as guide pondering the place of us here. Even in heavily anthropological space; cities, human species is a part of ecosystem, not a separate entity.
The book contains series of essays (many of them philosophical) about relationships between "human and non-human animals' in urban areas. The author uses the Coyote (coyote deity wildly belied in American culture), Aldo Leopold (wildlife ecologist) and teaching of Tao as guide pondering the place of us here. Even in heavily anthropological space; cities, human species is a part of ecosystem, not a separate entity.
August 21, 2020
While perhaps lacking the political urgency of the present in connecting the dots between economic instability, racial injustice, and climate change on a local and global scale, The Way of Coyote: Shared Journeys in the Urban Wilds by Gavin Van Horn (2018) nevertheless brings an overarching, holistic point of view to the contradictory landscape of Chicago, Illinois. Chicago, one of the most well known cities around the globe, albeit notorious, is spared its grimier history and violent present in a sweeping narrative about the interconnections, oppositions, and magnetism between the biological and the industrial, the natural and the technological. Van Horn presents less of an attempt to merge the two oppositions and instead gives more of a push towards a revelation of a greener, lusher, wilder, woodier, more Arcadian world that seeps through Chicago's crevices, cracks, potholes, and crumbled houses, buildings, and towers, reminding the audience that despite the city's push for big business in its hey-day, the neglected realm of the forest and garden, the flora and fauna never disappeared from its scene. Rather, that Edenic world merely diminished, like a slowly dying fae, still flashing its light, softer now, more sedate.
Van Horn wants to turn that light up, as he clearly does in his book. Throughout the text, he goes back in time to borrow philosophies from Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching:
"I'm not a Taoist practitioner in any formal sense, but I've found the Tao Te Ching a helpful interpretative tool for making sense of the city, for reconciling what seem to be dualities, such as the urban and the wild, into a more continuous whole. I think it's high time to welcome Lao Tzu back to town." (p. 6)
With Lao Tzu as model and motivation, Van Horn magnifies the bits of wilderness he finds within the cityscape: coyotes, hawks, great blue herons, foxes, just to name a handful. In chapters I particularly liked, he constructs wonderful little parables and fables concerning the animals, and imagines the kind of conversations they might have with one another as they find themselves in the same sticky situations of the man-made world. While wary of the scientific debasement of anthropomorphism, Van Horn deems that he is less of an anthropomorphizer than relating, empathizing, and yearning to understand the lives of these animals as they struggle and flourish, flourish and struggle under the pressures of human society. In that case, I say - anthropomorphize all you want.
Van Horn's research is a key component in giving readers a way to access what is being done about what is a indeed a deep problem in our world: the question of how to reconcile the rapidity of human capital with the oft-looked over habitats of the wild. In fact, it is an attempt at re-wilding what has been so terribly tamed. Van Horn is careful not to offend those who trampled on the land's previous form. Like blind or naive children, they need to be led... not scolded. And here is some of what they've done in conpensation:
"...ongoing red woodpecker habitat management on an active air force base in northern Florida; Chiricahua leopard frog recovery conducted by a coalition of ranchers in the American Southwest; and a reconstructed pseudo-salt marsh that is a boon for migrating birds in Eliat, Israel. All share a common thread: with the proper adjustments and adaptations, humans can live - and make a living - alongside other species, and both can thrive... reconciliation ecology will work for some species and not others, so conservation still needs restoration and preservation in its tool kit to accommodate different species." (p. 29)
A lot of The Way of Coyote a mapping of Chicago territory and a tracing of how it was altered against the grain of its own inclination prior to the arrival of the settlers (then, a manipulation for other purposes). For this reason it is an important book in its illumination of how drastically the landscape was transformed in such little time (one-two centuries as opposed to the millennia of a more organic flow). Rivers were completely reversed, entire prairies uprooted, forests completely cleared. Van Horn speaks out, loudly, as if to say: What remains? Who is still here? In doing so, he opens himself up, surrenders to the city's inevitable presence, lifting the veil of it to see the disaster that refuses to be ignored, shunned, the disaster that still lives, whether it wants to or not, its small light still twinkling, like ever dying stars. Catch it, care for it, and the world may yet still have a chance of reviving its will, if not its bounty.
"Who says we can't hear what a river has to say?" (p. 196)
Van Horn wants to turn that light up, as he clearly does in his book. Throughout the text, he goes back in time to borrow philosophies from Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching:
"I'm not a Taoist practitioner in any formal sense, but I've found the Tao Te Ching a helpful interpretative tool for making sense of the city, for reconciling what seem to be dualities, such as the urban and the wild, into a more continuous whole. I think it's high time to welcome Lao Tzu back to town." (p. 6)
With Lao Tzu as model and motivation, Van Horn magnifies the bits of wilderness he finds within the cityscape: coyotes, hawks, great blue herons, foxes, just to name a handful. In chapters I particularly liked, he constructs wonderful little parables and fables concerning the animals, and imagines the kind of conversations they might have with one another as they find themselves in the same sticky situations of the man-made world. While wary of the scientific debasement of anthropomorphism, Van Horn deems that he is less of an anthropomorphizer than relating, empathizing, and yearning to understand the lives of these animals as they struggle and flourish, flourish and struggle under the pressures of human society. In that case, I say - anthropomorphize all you want.
Van Horn's research is a key component in giving readers a way to access what is being done about what is a indeed a deep problem in our world: the question of how to reconcile the rapidity of human capital with the oft-looked over habitats of the wild. In fact, it is an attempt at re-wilding what has been so terribly tamed. Van Horn is careful not to offend those who trampled on the land's previous form. Like blind or naive children, they need to be led... not scolded. And here is some of what they've done in conpensation:
"...ongoing red woodpecker habitat management on an active air force base in northern Florida; Chiricahua leopard frog recovery conducted by a coalition of ranchers in the American Southwest; and a reconstructed pseudo-salt marsh that is a boon for migrating birds in Eliat, Israel. All share a common thread: with the proper adjustments and adaptations, humans can live - and make a living - alongside other species, and both can thrive... reconciliation ecology will work for some species and not others, so conservation still needs restoration and preservation in its tool kit to accommodate different species." (p. 29)
A lot of The Way of Coyote a mapping of Chicago territory and a tracing of how it was altered against the grain of its own inclination prior to the arrival of the settlers (then, a manipulation for other purposes). For this reason it is an important book in its illumination of how drastically the landscape was transformed in such little time (one-two centuries as opposed to the millennia of a more organic flow). Rivers were completely reversed, entire prairies uprooted, forests completely cleared. Van Horn speaks out, loudly, as if to say: What remains? Who is still here? In doing so, he opens himself up, surrenders to the city's inevitable presence, lifting the veil of it to see the disaster that refuses to be ignored, shunned, the disaster that still lives, whether it wants to or not, its small light still twinkling, like ever dying stars. Catch it, care for it, and the world may yet still have a chance of reviving its will, if not its bounty.
"Who says we can't hear what a river has to say?" (p. 196)
November 16, 2018
This book covers some really fascinating stuff. I'd always assumed cities were dead zones when it came to most non human life aside from rats, pigeons and the unfortunate stray but with a closer look that's just not true. Having visited Chicago before I think I appreciated this book more than someone who has never been but way less than a current resident. Each chapter covers a different part of wildlife/nature (animals, plants, waterways) that is in a city.
April 5, 2019
Of all the books I have read about ecology and the environment (more than I can count), this one is right at the top of my favorites list. I was surprised and impressed that Van Horn cites Lao Tsu and Aldo Leopold as helpers/leaders in his own developing reverence for the wilderness hidden in the city, in his case Chicago. Of course, Coyote, trickster of old, is there, sometimes in the flesh, sometimes in the deep imagination. Add a reference to Gary Snyder and I'm locked in. The message is that busy urban areas can be compatible with the ones who live in the dark, in the water, in the nooks where we rarely look. Our community is wider and more varied than our daily rush through it might suggest. Time to look deeper, and Van Horn is an excellent guide.
August 20, 2020
Although this book is full of "Oh gosh ecology" and suffers from too many attempts to be profound, nonetheless the essays are thoughtful, thought-provoking and give a new perspective to living in the area where I have lived in for the past 50 years. But the author doesn't mention rats.
August 23, 2019
Of the various coyote-themed books I'v read recently, this is the best non-fiction. That sounds like damning with faint praise--it's not.
Van Horn is interested in expanding nature writing from its traditional American focus on wilderness and the pastoral to the city, particularly Chicago, and coyotes are one of his guides, the small predators moving in to cities around the country. It's a chance to think about the wildness that exists within urban areas. (Nature is everything, so it is no great insight to say city's are natural; that they are wild is something else.)
There are elements of the standard personal essay here, but they do not overwhelm the rest of the story, which stays pretty rigorously focused on wild things, be they coyote or falcons or rivers. If there's a criticism, it's that some of the early essays are pretty light, van Horn only really hitting his stride in the last section of the book, which is excellent.
His tendency, as is the wont of so many American nature writers, is to reach immediately for the spiritual significance of his observations; even when he cites one of his other guides through the essays, the ecological thinker Aldo Leopold it's Leopold's grander statements, not his more scientific ones. It is true, though, that van Horn is not so intent on transcendence--except in the parochial sense of transcending the human mind and admitting the mindedness of other animals, in this mood reaching for the third of his guides, Lao-Tzu.
As I say, these build to the final and best section, when he considers greenways, waterways, and mindways through the city, culminating in an imaginary conversation between the three guides. He doesn't get the voices quite right--closest to Leopold, furthest from Coyote, but he does mostly pull it off, no small feat.
Van Horn is interested in expanding nature writing from its traditional American focus on wilderness and the pastoral to the city, particularly Chicago, and coyotes are one of his guides, the small predators moving in to cities around the country. It's a chance to think about the wildness that exists within urban areas. (Nature is everything, so it is no great insight to say city's are natural; that they are wild is something else.)
There are elements of the standard personal essay here, but they do not overwhelm the rest of the story, which stays pretty rigorously focused on wild things, be they coyote or falcons or rivers. If there's a criticism, it's that some of the early essays are pretty light, van Horn only really hitting his stride in the last section of the book, which is excellent.
His tendency, as is the wont of so many American nature writers, is to reach immediately for the spiritual significance of his observations; even when he cites one of his other guides through the essays, the ecological thinker Aldo Leopold it's Leopold's grander statements, not his more scientific ones. It is true, though, that van Horn is not so intent on transcendence--except in the parochial sense of transcending the human mind and admitting the mindedness of other animals, in this mood reaching for the third of his guides, Lao-Tzu.
As I say, these build to the final and best section, when he considers greenways, waterways, and mindways through the city, culminating in an imaginary conversation between the three guides. He doesn't get the voices quite right--closest to Leopold, furthest from Coyote, but he does mostly pull it off, no small feat.
August 3, 2019
I checked this out from the library, and couldn't really get into it. Before writing my review I was curious to see if it was worth finishing for others.
Cons for me:
1. The author gets all philosophical and introduces the three voices in this book of essays, and why/how they inspire him.
2. The book is not about how the coyote has survived in the urban landscape, but more about urban wildlife in general.
3. I totally misunderstood the premise of this book. Before getting started, I assumed (and was excited) that this book was about coyotes surviving in an urban landscape, written from the perspective of a coyote.
Pros for me:
1. The author really cares about wildlife.
2. His writing style was casual and easily relatable.
3. I didn't lose any money by buying this book that turned out to be something other than what I expected.
Summary: I might try to tackle this book again sometime, now that I know what the subject matter really covers. I just couldn't get into it right now given my assumptions about the book's topic.
Cons for me:
1. The author gets all philosophical and introduces the three voices in this book of essays, and why/how they inspire him.
2. The book is not about how the coyote has survived in the urban landscape, but more about urban wildlife in general.
3. I totally misunderstood the premise of this book. Before getting started, I assumed (and was excited) that this book was about coyotes surviving in an urban landscape, written from the perspective of a coyote.
Pros for me:
1. The author really cares about wildlife.
2. His writing style was casual and easily relatable.
3. I didn't lose any money by buying this book that turned out to be something other than what I expected.
Summary: I might try to tackle this book again sometime, now that I know what the subject matter really covers. I just couldn't get into it right now given my assumptions about the book's topic.
July 27, 2019
A lot of boring meandering essays. Not much about coyotes honestly. Lots of boring stories about wandering in Chicago (he wanders around a golf course and sees a coyote. And then again. That’s it to the story).
He spends a day talking to a wildlife ecologist in Chicago and doesn’t tell us much about the results of his studies...mostly about how he talked to the guy about a song of ice and fire and religion.
This guy is NOT a biologist or ecologist and it shows. Often rambles about culture and religion, which is occasionally interesting, but not what the book purports to be about.
Everything feels very superficial and there is never any meat to the book. He sort of starts to by giving a quote by a better author but it never really goes anywhere.
CNF
He spends a day talking to a wildlife ecologist in Chicago and doesn’t tell us much about the results of his studies...mostly about how he talked to the guy about a song of ice and fire and religion.
This guy is NOT a biologist or ecologist and it shows. Often rambles about culture and religion, which is occasionally interesting, but not what the book purports to be about.
Everything feels very superficial and there is never any meat to the book. He sort of starts to by giving a quote by a better author but it never really goes anywhere.
CNF
November 11, 2019
Very beautifully written, but sort of all over the place. The author inserts lots of little thoughts and tidbits that are interesting, but don't really go anywhere. He also has the tendency to quote white scholars talking about Native American philosophy, rather than Native American philosophers. He talks about bison reintroduction without talking about the (genocidal) reasons that bison are missing from many places - basically he avoids politics like the plague. The illustrations are quite nice. I also liked the Taoist lens on environmentalism.
July 2, 2019
Magical little book about wildlife in urban settings. Particularly relevant to those of us in the Chicago area who feel connections with the non-human creatures around us. I could have contributed a whole chapter on the secret bond I had with a fox in my old neighborhood near the forest preserve. The book introduced me to a whole community of people with similar experiences. It is beautifully and soulfully written.
January 14, 2024
3.5 stars. I have been reading a lot about the natural world (nature) and human impact with the intention to learn more about small steps one can take to help our environment and other creatures. This is a story about Chicago and the wildlife therein and how that city has/is pivoting to reduce some of the harmful impact humans have caused to the environment and other species. An interesting, thought-provoking and hopeful book.
December 9, 2018
If you obtained this book with the object of learning more about Canis Latrans and its urbanization prepare to be disappointed. I most certainly was glad I borrowed the book from the public library and did not waste funds in its purchase. If you are really interested in the history of Chicago this is going to be a worthwhile read.
January 3, 2021
I enjoyed the journey through Chicago’s urban wild, and the stories of people working toward positive change for all inhabitants, humans or otherwise. There was a bit of, what seemed like, a tangent in the middle of the book that I feel could’ve been better connected and developed to keep the reader fully engaged. This book was full of great messages of conservation in an urban setting.
July 20, 2023
An interesting and challenging book that encourages us to look at the urban environment with same curiosity and empathy as we look at more natural environments. It is also a call to rejoin the biotic community and treat non-humans as our neighbors, which is a message I think more people need to listen to.
February 11, 2020
In some ways this is like "Spell of the Sensuous" (which is referenced) for a more casual reader. But I appreciated the specific Chicago setting and also the generous references for future reading. Plus much of it is so lyrical.
July 11, 2019
It is quirky and some of it is too imaginative - the convos of the coyote - but the connection of nature in an urban setting and how to consider is excellent and very helpful for an environmentalist.
April 18, 2021
not one of the better books on coyotes
June 9, 2021
Fascinating look at urban wildlife & the importance of creating environment that supports wildlife in the city. Get out & look at who shares your city with you. You might be surprised!
April 19, 2022
Highly recommend for anyone wanting to learn more about wildlife in the city, Chicago's history and current programs supporting wildlife in urban areas. I really enjoyed it!
October 21, 2023
Absolutely amazing. Moving and so well written. I didn’t want to put it down.
March 30, 2023
Well-written, engaging, and w/ a lot of great information, but can taste a little pretention in the overall seasoning.
Read
February 23, 2019A charming meditation on the ways of urban wildlife and of the possibilities of humans harmonizing with non human animals.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews