“This fabulous book is a wild flight through the creative mind—yours and the Earth’s. Mary Reynolds Thompson combines philosophical insight, ecological wisdom, poetic awareness, and practical advice into a must-have guide to writing about a planet alive with imagination. The Wild Scribe connects us to our depths and vivifies our kinship with the oceans, cloudscapes, animals, and galaxies.”
Description
• Teaches step-by-step writing practices that foster deep connection with place, seasonal rhythms, and the natural world
• Provides practical prompts and exercises designed to cultivate wild language, ecological literacy, and personal transformation
• Offers creative journaling techniques to process climate grief, restore belonging, and participate in the renewal of Earth
LISTEN DEEPLY to awaken your wild imagination and free your untamed voice as your visions comingle with the voice of the Earth. Let hawks, forests, childhood sanctuaries, and beloved animals shape the very rhythm of your words into authentic “wild language.”
Using writing as a tool for presence, healing, and ecological stewardship, Mary Reynolds Thompson shows how to move beyond observation and into relationship with the land. Drawing on decades of experience in teaching eco-writing and poetry therapy, she provides ten themed sessions for inspiration, each with stories and reflections, writing prompts, and exercises that address topics such as grounding, seasonal awareness, and animal embodiment. Character sketches of plants and animals, haiku and haibun writing, and reflective exercises for processing solastalgia and climate grief deepen the experience.
At its heart, The Wild Scribe invites us to open a dialogue with the more-than-human world. Blending the beauty of nature writing with the immediacy of guided practice, this book speaks to anyone who feels the ache of disconnection and the desire to participate in the renewal of Earth and self. It is a call to remember that when we rewild our words, we rewild the world within and around us.
Reviews
“Mary Reynolds Thompson’s elegantly written book gives new life to the hallowed tradition of nature journal writing: an important, reflective, and moving practice of exploration and appreciation much needed in a time of constant distraction. Wild Writing invites writing as listening: to the elements, the seasons, the presence of place, and our innermost self. As Wild Scribes we find ourselves reentering the Great Conversation, back in creative relation with the more-than-human presences around us.”
“The Wild Scribe arrives at exactly the right moment—when the living world needs witnesses as much as it needs activists. Part guided writing practice, part chorus of voices, Mary Reynolds Thompson weaves her own writing with that of dozens of Wild Scribes responding to her prompts, creating a living anthology of human and Earth in conversation. Drawing on haiku, haibun, solastalgia, and the magic of naming, she shows us that Wild Writing is not mere observation but a way of grieving what is being lost, falling in love with what remains, and caring for a world that needs our words. For hikers, ecotherapists, poets, and anyone who has felt the urgency of putting the living world into language, this book is both compass and companion.”
“The Wild Scribe is more than a book on nature writing. It is an invitation and a guided journey into 'refugia,' the sacred murmurings of the mystical to be found in hollow trees, pockets of moss, and the sloshing of tidal waters. As these times of accelerated change and transformation continue to wash over the inter-webs, deep sustenance awaits where pen meets page meets sky. Mary Reynolds Thompson is your skillful guide on this extraordinary journey!”
