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Out of the Woods: Seeing Nature in the Everyday
2018 Reading the West Book Awards Nonfiction Winner
Have you ever wondered about society’s desire to cultivate the perfect lawn, why we view some animals as “good” and some as “bad,” or even thought about the bits of nature inside everyday items–toothbrushes, cell phones, and coffee mugs? In this fresh and introspective collection of essays, Julia Corbett examines nature in our lives with all of its ironies and contradictions by seamlessly integrating personal narratives with morsels of highly digestible science and research. Each story delves into an overlooked aspect of our relationship with nature—insects, garbage, backyards, noise, open doors, animals, and language—and how we cover our tracks.
With a keen sense of irony and humor and an awareness of the miraculous in the mundane, Julia recognizes the contradictions of contemporary life. She confronts the owner of a high-end market who insists on keeping his doors open in all temperatures. Takes us on a trip to a new mall with a replica of a trout stream that once flowed nearby. The phrase “out of the woods” guides us through layers of meaning to a contemplation of grief, remembrance, and resilience.
Out of the Woods leads to surprising insights into the products, practices, and phrases we take for granted in our everyday encounters with nature and encourages us all to consider how we might re-value or reimagine our relationships with nature in our everyday lives.
Have you ever wondered about society’s desire to cultivate the perfect lawn, why we view some animals as “good” and some as “bad,” or even thought about the bits of nature inside everyday items–toothbrushes, cell phones, and coffee mugs? In this fresh and introspective collection of essays, Julia Corbett examines nature in our lives with all of its ironies and contradictions by seamlessly integrating personal narratives with morsels of highly digestible science and research. Each story delves into an overlooked aspect of our relationship with nature—insects, garbage, backyards, noise, open doors, animals, and language—and how we cover our tracks.
With a keen sense of irony and humor and an awareness of the miraculous in the mundane, Julia recognizes the contradictions of contemporary life. She confronts the owner of a high-end market who insists on keeping his doors open in all temperatures. Takes us on a trip to a new mall with a replica of a trout stream that once flowed nearby. The phrase “out of the woods” guides us through layers of meaning to a contemplation of grief, remembrance, and resilience.
Out of the Woods leads to surprising insights into the products, practices, and phrases we take for granted in our everyday encounters with nature and encourages us all to consider how we might re-value or reimagine our relationships with nature in our everyday lives.
232 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2018
12 people are currently reading
374 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 19, 2019
I've been thinking for a while about how to develop and retain everyday connections to nature, no matter whether we live in the city, the suburbs, or the countryside. Not only do should we strive to protect nature, but we also need nature for our own health and well-being. Our modern disconnections from the natural world are numerous, and they have effects of great depth and breadth on our lives and culture.
Dr. Corbett writes engagingly and accessibly, and I enjoyed her writing. However, her persona as a writer is not always terribly relatable, and her tone occasionally came off as superior. Not all of us would feel remorse for not knowing the bugs in our backyard or tell bus drivers to stop idling in no-idle zones, and I think even fewer of us spend our summers in a Wyoming cabin. That being said, her writing felt authentic and genuine. And it was beautiful. So, I don't think she needed to change her voice; I think we just need more voices. Writers and artists and speakers from more numerous walks of life and perspectives need to teach others how to pay attention and reconnect to the planet we came from, to help us shift from viewing ourselves as consumers to viewing ourselves as citizens.
Dr. Corbett writes engagingly and accessibly, and I enjoyed her writing. However, her persona as a writer is not always terribly relatable, and her tone occasionally came off as superior. Not all of us would feel remorse for not knowing the bugs in our backyard or tell bus drivers to stop idling in no-idle zones, and I think even fewer of us spend our summers in a Wyoming cabin. That being said, her writing felt authentic and genuine. And it was beautiful. So, I don't think she needed to change her voice; I think we just need more voices. Writers and artists and speakers from more numerous walks of life and perspectives need to teach others how to pay attention and reconnect to the planet we came from, to help us shift from viewing ourselves as consumers to viewing ourselves as citizens.
February 2, 2021
“Our ability to see and comprehend the spillover [of nature] and the connections are our greatest hope...”
Written by a Communications & Environmental Humanities professor at the U of U. I loved reading a collection of essays on nature that included places I was familiar with (Liberty Park, City Creek, the Uintahs...)The essay on noise pollution especially stuck out and gave me language to an issue that has always driven me crazy—continued noise exposure in our cities is making us more anxious and reducing our long-term memories. Overall, I appreciated a book about the environment that was more of a conversation about culture and how we can acknowledge our connections to the natural world, and impact on it, no matter where we are.
Written by a Communications & Environmental Humanities professor at the U of U. I loved reading a collection of essays on nature that included places I was familiar with (Liberty Park, City Creek, the Uintahs...)The essay on noise pollution especially stuck out and gave me language to an issue that has always driven me crazy—continued noise exposure in our cities is making us more anxious and reducing our long-term memories. Overall, I appreciated a book about the environment that was more of a conversation about culture and how we can acknowledge our connections to the natural world, and impact on it, no matter where we are.
May 9, 2024
I read this book as my fourth for the Mass Center for the Book’s 2024 Reading Challenge! April’s challenge was to read a book about nature, the environment, or climate change.
April 25, 2019
Julia Corbett’s Out of the Woods: Seeing Nature in the Everyday is a unique take on the rising tensions we experience in our day-to-day environments. From noise pollution to socially-dictated lawn care standards to the personal parallels between her father’s death and the woods he loved in life, Corbett’s work challenges contemporary assumptions and beliefs about the impact we have on the world around us. Her work is an invitation to look more carefully at where we walk, eat, sleep, converse, work, and play and see in it the natural world that has given us life. That change in mentality, her book argues, is the first step in empowering us to change and make a difference.
Corbett’s emphasis on seeing nature in everyday encounters—in a camera, a mug, a garden hose—allows the reader to consider in a very different light where and how they find nature. Closing that gap between nature as a separate space we go to find in an area devoid of houses and gas stations and Walmarts and nature as an inherent element of consumer culture is vital to Corbett’s book. In reading this book, I feel more keenly the responsibility I have to be a good steward of the Earth as I recognize how everything I own and interact with has its roots in the natural world.
Corbett excels in her prose at linking the macro with the micro. The movement of Earth in relation to the Sun and the Moon become personally significant as she reflects on her daily experiences. Our societal preoccupation with power and status Corbett considers through the lens of Kentucky bluegrass and car engines heard around her neighborhood. So often books and films and articles about environmental changes remain at the macro level, broadcasting doomsday and inevitable economic and social failure in the near future. While Corbett doesn’t mince words about the negative effects of the human impact on the environment, she combats that scene by sharing her personal experience and how she embraces her personal stewardship and contribution as a citizen of Planet Earth. She focuses on a mentality change that can be real at the individual level, rather than throwing her hands in the air and pointing fingers at governmental agencies and large corporations that should be doing the changing.
On the whole, it was a great book with a much-appreciated different spin on environmental issues and resonating personal reflections that invite the reader in rather than condemning them. It’s a book I will recommend to friends and family for a perspective change.
Corbett’s emphasis on seeing nature in everyday encounters—in a camera, a mug, a garden hose—allows the reader to consider in a very different light where and how they find nature. Closing that gap between nature as a separate space we go to find in an area devoid of houses and gas stations and Walmarts and nature as an inherent element of consumer culture is vital to Corbett’s book. In reading this book, I feel more keenly the responsibility I have to be a good steward of the Earth as I recognize how everything I own and interact with has its roots in the natural world.
Corbett excels in her prose at linking the macro with the micro. The movement of Earth in relation to the Sun and the Moon become personally significant as she reflects on her daily experiences. Our societal preoccupation with power and status Corbett considers through the lens of Kentucky bluegrass and car engines heard around her neighborhood. So often books and films and articles about environmental changes remain at the macro level, broadcasting doomsday and inevitable economic and social failure in the near future. While Corbett doesn’t mince words about the negative effects of the human impact on the environment, she combats that scene by sharing her personal experience and how she embraces her personal stewardship and contribution as a citizen of Planet Earth. She focuses on a mentality change that can be real at the individual level, rather than throwing her hands in the air and pointing fingers at governmental agencies and large corporations that should be doing the changing.
On the whole, it was a great book with a much-appreciated different spin on environmental issues and resonating personal reflections that invite the reader in rather than condemning them. It’s a book I will recommend to friends and family for a perspective change.
September 8, 2018
Out of the Woods: Seeing Nature in the Everyday is full of wonderful turns and explorations about how our human lives entangle and enmesh with all that nonhuman life surrounding us. These essays promise the everyday and proceed to show us the extraordinary—in the everyday. Of course, the everyday includes a day on the moon and the loss of a father, as well as a meditation on trash and insects. There are bear stories. There are dog stories. There are stories about college students. The author feels free to go anywhere, and you’ll want to follow.
October 29, 2018
3.5. Lots of useful information to get one thinking about the “nature” of things all around them, or in most cases the lack thereof. Most things come from someplace or something in nature, the door is wooden as in it came from a tree, that might have been lucky enough toy have been in a woods...
As I kept reading I felt that I was sitting in a long, all but it good college lecture, and I think I was hoping for a little more in this book. A bit less lecture maybe and more inspiration to see nature in the everyday.
As I kept reading I felt that I was sitting in a long, all but it good college lecture, and I think I was hoping for a little more in this book. A bit less lecture maybe and more inspiration to see nature in the everyday.
August 13, 2019
A number of essays analyzing our modern world and its blend of nature. While some of the authors opinions I found to be a little too much and caught myself thinking “ok cool it,” I could sympathize about her beliefs and understand how she came to those conclusions. Overall, the book allowed me to think and to reconsider my impression of the world around me. In that, I think it’s worth the read and the book did what it was meant to do.
February 15, 2019
Author does an excellent job at showing how nature is part of our everyday life, even if we are not aware. She also shows the crisis we are creating in nature by not being aware of our earthly responsibilities.
Each chapter is an essay that takes us on a different journey into how our decisions change nature and how we are influenced by nature.
Each chapter is an essay that takes us on a different journey into how our decisions change nature and how we are influenced by nature.
October 24, 2019
While the topic was interesting and covered many good points the narrative felt too disjointed (both chapter to chapter and in the chapters themselves). The tone/voice was rather nebulous and wispy too which didn’t help. To no fault of the authors, the Internet circa early 2010s has utterly ruined the word Kin for me in the context the book uses it. (Also spoilers for the play Into The Woods.)
November 28, 2023
2.5 stars. A forgettable collection of essays on nature, including on noise pollution, insects, waste, energy usage, her experience as a gardener, the City Creek Center in Salt Lake City, UT, et al. For me, the book didn't really hang together, and it felt preachy or smug in places. My favourite chapter was "A Regular Day for the Moon," partly because it was more poetic than most of the book.
December 20, 2018
woooooooow everyone needs to read this; especially “Speaking a Shared Language”. wowowowow
January 13, 2020
Well thought out, researched, written. Read a little like a college text to me. Thought provoking though.
September 18, 2021
This book is PHENOMENAL. I’d recommend it to anyone. It’s an important look into consumerism and the way it’s destroyed our concept of what it means to be in nature. Check it out if you ever get a chance.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews