Wild Spectacle: Seeking Wonders in a World Beyond Humans

by Janisse Ray

Looking for adventure and continuing a process of self-discovery, Janisse Ray has repeatedly set out to immerse herself in wildness, to be wild, and to learn what wildness can teach us. From overwintering with monarch butterflies in Mexico to counting birds in Belize, the stories in Wild Spectacle capture her luckiest moments—ones of heart-pounding amazement, discovery of romance, and moving toward living more wisely. In Ray's worst moments she crosses boundaries to encounter danger and embrace sadness.

Anchored firmly in two places Ray has called home—Montana and southern Georgia—the sixteen essays here span a landscape from Alaska to Central America, connecting common elements in the ecosystems of people and place. One of her abiding griefs is that she has missed the sights of explorers like Bartram, Sacagawea, and Carver: flocks of passenger pigeons, routes of wolves, herds of bison. She craves a wilder world and documents encounters that are rare in a time of disappearing habitat, declining biodiversity, and a world too slowly coming to terms with climate change.

In an age of increasingly virtual, urban life, Ray embraces the intentionality of trying to be a better person balanced with seeking out natural spectacle, abundance, and less trammeled environments. She questions what it means to travel into the wild as a woman, speculates on the impacts of ecotourism and travel in general, questions assumptions about eating from the land, and appeals to future generations to make substantive change.

Wild Spectacle explores our first home, the wild earth, and invites us to question its known and unknown beauties and curiosities.

Genres: Nature, Nonfiction, Essays, Memoir, Animals, Travel

208 pages, Hardcover

First published October 26, 2021

About the author

is an award-winning and beloved American writer. Her work encourages wild, place-centric, sustainable lives and often calls attention to heart-breaking degradations of the natural world.

She writes the popular Substack TRACKLESS WILD, tracklesswild.substack.com.

Her newsletter for writers, SPIRAL-BOUND, janisseray.substack.com.

She is a sought-after and highly praised teacher of writing. She leads both in-person and online writing workshops, including a summer memoir course online, WRITE YOUR OWN STORY.

You can find more information about workshops and courses at her website.
https://janisseray.com/product-catego...

Check out her book CRAFT & CURRENT: A MANUAL FOR MAGICAL WRITING.

Janisse has won an American Book Award, Pushcart Prize, Southern Bookseller Award, Southern Environmental Law Center Writing Award, Nautilus Award, and Eisenberg Award, among many others.

Her collection of essays, WILD SPECTACLE, won the Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence.

Her books have been translated into Turkish, French, and Italian.

Janisse's first book, ECOLOGY OF A CRACKER CHILDHOOD, recounts her experiences growing up in a junkyard, the daughter of a poor, white, fundamentalist Christian family. The book interweaves family history and memoir with natural history—specifically, descriptions of the ecology of the vanishing longleaf pine forests that once blanketed the Southern coastal plains.

ECOLOGY was followed by many other books, mostly creative nonfiction--often nature writing-- as well as poetry and fiction.

She earned an MFA from the University of Montana, has received two honorary doctorates, and was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. She has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Georgia Writer's Association.

She lives on an organic farm inland from Savannah, Georgia, where she enjoys wildflowers, dark chocolate, and the blues.

Reviews

[Brent · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I used to think that there was so much love on earth that the human form, composed as it is of corpuscles and atoms, could not contain it and so it overflowed onto the land, which became a vessel for affection. Now I don't think so. I think the love is in the land, in the black water, and we go to wildness to glean love, to be nourished."
Pages 153-4, in "A Terrible and Beautiful Scar: On Slavery; Near Tallahassee, Florida"
These are essays in nature and personal experience, from trips near and far, from our premier writer of nature in Georgia.
You must read this.
Thanks to Fulton County Public Library for the loan, and to Trinity University Press for publishing this anthology.

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Janisse Ray’s writing is breathtaking. Each essay in this collection is a vivid, engaging story and reflection of her life in various places of wilderness. I only have hyperbolic words to describe them.

[Mallory McDuff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Janisse Ray is a masterful storyteller, weaving the beauty of the land with the poignant struggle and humility of being human at this time in history. In each landscape she traverses, I felt the utter privilege and sheer honor, in some sense, of living at a time when humans could actually make a difference in this climate crisis. Her sentences help to connect people to places, and her stories reveal our bonds with each other. As a Southerner, I felt kinship for each chapter. And who doesn't love those brilliant blue and orange hues on the cover of the book? It's like a sunset writ large, bound within the pages of her narrative.

[Claire Matturro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just as in her acclaimed Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, Ray’s insightful, eloquent writing shines in Wild Spectacle: Seeking Wonders in a World Beyond Humans (Trinity University Press (October 26,
2021)), a collection of nonfiction essays about wilderness and life, ranging from Costa Rico to
Alaska, the western USA, and home to her own native South Georgia. Make no mistake, with its
combination of lyrical sentences, heartfelt truths, and profound observations, this book is a gem
and a worthy sequel to Cracker Childhood.

[Eva Silverfine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wild Spectacle is an essay collection of experiences that span over many years, arranged in sections exploring the West, farther abroad, and, finally, closer to home. This last section includes most of my personal favorites. Perhaps what I admire most is Ray’s intentionality in seeking out these natural, or as she refers to them, “wild,” landscapes and experiences. I share her perspective of the value of connecting to the natural world as well as the sadness at its diminishment by humanity’s hand. Ray writes with beauty, with honesty, and with insightfulness.

[Karen Trostle · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t usually enjoy short stories.. but these were wonderful!
Monarch butterflies, Alaska, Montana, Okefenokee swamp- Rays search for wilderness matches my own yearning.
Except SHE does it.. I just whine that I want to.

[Katrina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wild Spectacle aims to draw readers into the natural world, yet it didn't quite capture the profound or unforgettable moments I hoped for. While the essays occasionally grabbed my attention, they often missed that magical spark that truly great nature writing ignites—a sense of awe and deeper connection with the environment. In a time when our compassion for nature is more critical than ever, this collection sometimes felt like an appreciation of nature just for the sake of it, without igniting the imagination or deepening our yearning for the transcendent. That’s not to say the writing is bad; it isn’t. However, it lacks that transformative touch. If you are searching for a deeply moving journey through nature, this book might not hit the mark.

[Dianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

p. 184: "Some of us meditate in old growth forests. Some of us watch birds. Some of us gaze out at a beautiful view of a lake. Some of us hunt. But the instinct is the same, I think, to understand that the earth is wild, and that we are of the earth, and also wild. Some of us are willing to feel this more strongly than others."

[Cassandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received a complimentary copy.

Great stories that range in emotion. The author keeps you wanting to dive into more as time passes by.

[Jill Prouty · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sweet reminder to look and listen at all the beauty of nature.

[Sarah Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Travel to the wild areas of Montana, Costa Rica, Belize, Mexico, Florida and more. Hike, snorkel, camp, canoe, and settle in for a while. Observe the monarchs, frogs, birds, elk, manatees, and other fascinating creatures. Feel the beauty and grandeur and mourn the effects of climate change and the shrinking areas of wilderness. Each essay is beautiful and wonderfully written. My favorites are paddling through the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia and the spiders in a Mississippi graveyard.

[Marjorie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it in a few days. The word smithing is admirable, personal, and yet familiar in my own experience. Things like get out in nature so it can scare the shit outta ya. Yup, know that feeling. IT seems I too have been to many of the places she writes about; more than I would have considered likely.

Fresh discerning eyes and mind to express details for us all to savor and to hone within ourselves.

There is something about Okefenokee swamp that calls for me to return too. Janisse introduced me to that in an earlier book. Have been, will go again.

I wish I could tell what years some these essays were written; when she was younger and ideas of the time were shared. I began to get annoyed that she is being welcomed with open arms by environmental advocating giants because of her writing prowess, reputation. Retreats to write, grants acquired. All well deserved of course. BUT, all the rest of us are relegated to the scorn of the privileged as trampling herds of eco tourists.

I’m not going to have that Alaskan super meal surrounded by special people devoted to consuming the wilderness bounty. Can’t afford it. They wouldn’t think to invite. I’d be too boring. Opportunity to the best of environmental experiences is increasingly based on superior attributes; like scholarships. A fellow geography graduate student pointed this likihood back in the early 70s.

Best to develop fresh eyes to now. Janisse does help us to do that if we pay attention.

It’s good to be alive, expressive, kind, generous. Appreciate the world can kill you, us.

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I could read this book over and over again. Lovely.

[Christy Knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting, colorful and poetic, this collection of stories from a beloved southern author offers a feasting on Nature in some of her most vulnerable and treasured places in the Americas. From Alaska to Belize, life and death see-saw as creatures cry for help and humans devote their lives to the precarious stewardship of wild territory. However brief their lives in the vastness of geologic time, these heroes create sanctuaries that the author visits in pursuit of Nature in her purest, most terrifying, and delicate forms. Ray makes intricate connections between scars on the land, loss of life, and the ultimate transformation with a message that ends on a powerful and uplifting note. Everyone should read this book to gain perspective on earth’s spiraling wonders and why and how we should protect them.

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many things I loved about this book. I love that it’s a collection of essays- set across many years and many places. Each one began a fresh story that pulled me in and made me love the place. I love that it created a desire in me to go outside and learn about my world. It also, slyly, made me want to be brave and to conquer my fears. I love that the stories weren’t in a straight line, but zig zagged through time and space. First book read in 2022, and I’ll remember this one for a long time.

[Ellen Ulken · Rating 5 out of 5]

These essays on nature travels will have the reader migrating with butterflies to Mexico, studying spiders at night in a Mississippi graveyard, snorkeling in Belize, hiking Montana hills, discovering the beauty of Alaska, camping and canoeing in Georgia's Okefenokee Swamp. And more. After a couple of homebound years, this literary journey with Janisse Ray took me on a wild and spectacular eco-trip with exotic birds and fearsome amphibians along with some remarkable nature-loving humans. Wonderfully told tales.

[Sheri S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This beautifully written book is a reflection on the value and specialness of nature. The author writers about experiences she has had and lessons she has learned while out in the wild terrain. She finds value and worth in the monarch butterfly, the frog and spider among many other creatures. Each story stands independently and they are all worth reading.

[Jenny Giarratano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ran through this book on first read to meet our meeting deadline - then listened to Janisse speak about the book and her experiences at Mainspring's book club last month. Now I plan to re-read and savor every line. She's an awesome teacher on our natural world and the relationship we could and should have with it.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heartily recommend Janisse Ray to anyone who loves nature writing, wild species, or travel essays. Her writing is really beautiful and her adventures are memorable.

[Lynne Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ray writes a very personal and deeply moving memoir of her journeys through the natural world.

[Susan Dermond · Rating 5 out of 5]

wonderful, like all of her writing. She reveals her spirit, her integrity, and her dedication to living consciously through beautiful writing about the natural world.

[Katy Manley · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightful recollection of Ray's experiences as a naturalist and her wildness.

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good.
She is talented with word usage that brings the reader directly into the story. She plops you down right into the heart of the place.

[Rebecca Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Lyrical. Ray writes from her heart about places I've been to. She put in words how I have felt in nature.

[Cristian · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is divided into three parts: Meridian, where she writes about her ventures through Montana and speaks on land conservation and the risk of animals becoming extinct, primarily bears. In the second part, she travels from Costa Rica to Belize to Alaska. Traveling from the Southern to the Northern Hemisphere. Hence the title Migration. In Magnitude, we learn about frogs and spiders and the immense variations between these tiny species. She also tells about a near-accidental experience with death.

There is a strong connection between the author and the wild. She painted every location she visited with such elegance. Iridescent colors were used to sketch the wildlife and fauna she encountered. It was gentle and protective, inspiring us to be environmentally conscious. And it solidified my thoughts on traveling to Montana next year.

The author was admirable in the way that when she traveled alone she put herself first. And even when life presented her with a life-changing decision, she put her needs ahead of everything else. She had recently become a mother and had to decide between staying grounded and raising the child or retreating back into the wilderness. As a young woman who just graduated from college, she understood the difficulty of such a decision. Therefore, she decided to pursue her journey through the wilderness of the world. In the end, she recounts a kayaking trip with her son and his friends. She has to part ways due to one of her sons' friends ingesting poison and having to return to the starting point to get the child help (while carrying the child through marsh and wetlands!). She manages to return hours later and her son says, “I knew you’d be back.” It was touching because she mentions the decision about leaving her child early in the book.

Sometimes, the author travels with friends. Occasionally, she is accompanied by her husband. There were powerful moments of grief shared between those closest to her and the wildlife. Yet, I sensed a longing for something missing. Perhaps it was a sense of sadness over the cruelty humans have shown to nature. Perhaps what's missing is a universal approach to protecting and preserving wildlife and the environment.

Beautifully written. 5 out of 5 stars. Definitely recommend.




Biomes - James Heather

[Jim Huffstodt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some of us are at an age in life where it's unlikely we'll actually go to the far and distant wild places described so brilliantly by award-winning writer Janisse Ray in this evocative, insightful, and inspiring collection of nature essays titled: Wild Spectacle. Reading this book is the next best thing to actually being there. The author brings to this writing a deep appreciation, knowledge and understanding of wilderness and its creatures. The descriptive accounts of her wild adventures employ all the senses. The reader sees the female elk standing silent from only a few feet away, hears her heavy breathing, feels the Montana chill in your bones, and smells the pungent aroma of rain-drenched forest. Here in the pages of Wild Spectacle Ray once again demonstrates that she is among America's most gifted nature writers. Highly recommended.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Traveling into the wild with Janisse Ray is a worthy endeavor. I enjoyed each of her adventurous stories, as she shared her emotions, inner thoughts, and deep love for nature.

In the Elkhorn, I was with Janisse, hiking, recognizing the terrain, visualizing the plants, feeling the panic creeping in, and witnessing the cycles of death and life.

In the O Swamp, I was paddling the canoe, marking the miles, questioning my judgment, experiencing the blackness of a swampy night.

A wonderful collection of stories and writing that places you there, beside Ray, imagining the most vivid aspects of our nature.

"Nature writing has been called a marginal literature. If culture is a set of stories we tell about life in a place and how to navigate that life, then nature writing is literature at its most essential."

[Mel Brannen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspiring, relaxing, contemplative, restful., beautiful. This book is anthology of essays about being in nature. It’s kind of like a book of poetry - something to be read one essay at a time - maybe one each day or one each week. I find myself inspired to spend more time out-of-doors beyond manmade sound and light. Something I am missing.

[Jennifer Kunin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Janisse writes about nature in such a detailed way that it's almost too much for me to comprehend. if only we all saw the world in the same way!!

"and I thought about how a person gets to know a place. It is a reciprocal process of incorporation, of adding one life to another. It is an exchange."

[Emily Fly like a Bird · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not finished yet. I enjoy the book but dislike the bias toward describing men by their looks positively and women as going gray and old.
Also, the story of volunteering and ‘succumbing’ to a superior at a park is triggering.