Savage Grace: A Journey in Wildness

by Jay Griffiths

Jay Griffiths is a tour guide for anyone who has ever wished to commune with the side of our human psyche that remains in touch with the wild. Equally at home among the “sea gypsy” Bajo people who live off the coast of Thailand and forage their food from the ocean floor, drinking the psychedelic ayahuasca plant with Amazonian shamans, or joining an Inuit whale hunt at the northern tip of Canada, Griffiths takes readers on an adventure both charted and un-chartable. She divides her meditations on these travels into sections named after the ancient elemental properties of the universe—Earth, Air, Fire, Ice, and Water—because her subject matter is not merely the places traveled to but the depths of mind and the cultural narratives revealed by place. It is a universal story told of far-flung groups of humans, with vastly different ways of life, connected through the varied wilderness that sustains them. By describing the ways in which human societies and the human mind have developed in response to the wilder elements of our homelands, Savage Grace reveals itself as a benediction for the emotional, intellectual, and physical nourishment that people continue to draw from the natural world. Under the sway of Griffiths’ charisma, her poetic prose, and her deeply learned and persuasive case for the wild roots of our shared human being, we learn that we are all, each and every one of us, a force of nature.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction

400 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

About the author

Jay Griffiths was born in Manchester and studied English Literature at Oxford University. She spent a couple of years living in a shed on the outskirts of Epping Forest and has travelled the world, but for many years she has been based in Wales.

Reviews

[Sally Piper · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is top shelf writing about landscapes and wild places, from the Amazon to West Papua, and the corruption of those places and the first peoples who occupy them by those who believe they can offer a better way to live or by those looking to exploit those lands and people for capital gain. Unique, adventurous, blisteringly honest and just beautifully written. (Originally published in the UK titled 'Wild: An Elemental Journey')

[Matt Wang · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really insightful look at role of religion and nature had on civilization before Christian's ruined everything.