Rhythm Of The Wild

From Kim Heacox, the acclaimed author of The Only Kayak and John Muir and the Ice That Started a Fire, comes Rhythm of the Wild, an Alaska memoir focused on Denali National Park. Music runs through every page of this book, as do stories, rivers and wolves. At its heart, Rhythm of the Wild is a love story. It begins in 1981 and ends in 2014, yet reaches beyond the arc of time. Author and mountaineer Jonathan Waterman has called Heacox “our northern Edward Abbey.” In this book we find out why. We hitchhike with Kim through Idaho, camp on the Colorado Plateau, and fly off the sand cliffs of Hangman Creek with a little terrier named Super Max, the Wonder Dog. We meet Zed, the Aborigine; Nine Fingers, the blues guitarist; and Adolph Murie, the legendary wildlife biologist, who dared to say that wolves should be protected, not persecuted. Kim also reprises in this book his friend Richard Steele, a beloved character from The Only Kayak. Some books are larger than their actual subject—this is one. Part memoir, part exploration of Denali’s inspiring natural and human history, and part conservation polemic, Rhythm of the Wild ranges from funny to provocative. It’s a celebration of—and a plea to restore and defend—the vibrant earth and our rightful place in it.

Rhythm of the Heart is a compelling memoir about Kim Heacox’s 30+ year relationship with the most iconic landscape in Alaska, a sister book to his 2005 Lyons book The Only Kayak, a PEN USA Literary Award finalist now in its seventh printing. Woven throughout the personal narrative will be stories on the human and natural histories of the Denali National Park, garnished with a conservation polemic, much as Edward Abbey did with Desert Solitaire, and Rick Bass has done with any number of books (that continue to sell well). Heacox will write of Denali through an inspirational arc; to show how a place can touch a life, even save a life, quietly, profoundly, day after day, year after year, and how that saving multiplied by millions of lives over a century makes the world a better place. Heacox makes the argument, through his beautiful and impassioned prose, that we must save these places so they in turn will save us. Denali National Park is the most accessible subarctic sanctuary in the world, and has awakened millions of people to what’s authentic, priceless and true. Any serious student of spirituality and the American landscape must one day address his relationship with Alaska, and once in Alaska, he must confront Denali, the heart of the state, the state of the heart.

Mindfulness in Wild Swimming explores how swimming in rivers, lakes and seas is the epitome of conscious living, guiding the reader through practical mindful exercises and technique tips, and reveals how wild swimming can be the ultimate physical meditation.

A collection of unusually expressive photos of animals and landscapes. The photos were taken with long exposures resulting in impressionistic, painterly visualizations of movement in nature. Brief quotations accompany the photos. 12x9"Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR