Will to Wild
Adventures Great and Small to Change Your Life
-
- $17.99
-
- $17.99
Publisher Description
Embrace adventures both big and small and pursue your wild ideas with this “profoundly inspiring and laugh-out-loud funny” (Jaimal Yogis, author of The Fear Project) guidebook from seasoned adventurer and podcaster Shelby Stanger.
Will to Wild is an instruction manual to adventure. Your guide: enthusiastic outdoorswoman Shelby Stanger. Shelby has been teaching folks how to leap into the unknown since she taught her first surf class over twenty years ago. Over the years, she watched many of her students quit their jobs, end dysfunctional relationships, and move across the country for a healthier work-life balance—all after spending a bit of time in nature. Shelby marveled at the phenomenon. Being outside was changing the lives of her students, her peers, and herself. Shelby was so intrigued, she began to tell their stories, first as a writer and journalist, then as a podcast host for Wild Ideas Worth Living, REI Co-op Studio’s flagship podcast.
With her first book, Will to Wild, Shelby shares all she’s witnessed and learned in her years covering adventurers. It’s the book she wishes she’d had when she’d first felt the urge to leap from familiar to wild terrain. The one that takes you step-by-step from the first inkling of inspiration for your own wild idea through fear and self-doubt and on to the finish line.
In these pages, discover stories with practical tips and tactics from world-famous rock climbers and ultra-runners to longtime thru-hikers, surfers, and desk jockeys who’ve figured out how to get off the clock, and even a suburban mom who started teaching women to scale frozen waterfalls in her mid-fifties. Along with Shelby’s stories, they show you how to get unstuck, how to pay attention to “trail signs” that point you toward your adventure, how to face your fears, and what to do when everything goes haywire (which will likely never happen, never fear!). With Shelby’s characteristic strength and vulnerability, Will to Wild “is the ultimate guide for anyone looking to try something new” (Captain Liz Clark, author of Swell) and encourages you to break out of your comfort zones, get out into nature, and bring your own wild ideas to life. Whether you’re already an adventure junkie or someone who’s never set up a tent, there’s something inside these pages for you.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this upbeat debut, journalist Stanger calls on readers to pursue a life of adventure, whether that means scaling Mount Everest or visiting a national park. Drawing on others' odysseys and her own experience ditching a career in marketing to become an adventure journalist, Stanger explains how to pursue "wild ideas," or ones that "scare you," involve nature, and "change your life in a positive way." Readers should start by determining whether they're stuck, she writes, be it in a job or relationship. Next, she explains how to seek "trail signs" to get started, as when an amateur runner read about a man who trekked across America, and became "so excited he thought he might throw up." (He eventually pulled off the same feat, running from San Francisco to New York in "forty-two days, six hours, and thirty minutes.") Stanger discusses mapping one's proverbial trail, tackling fear, and reaching the "finish line," after which adventurers may feel fatigue or even grief. Drawing on anecdotes from thrill seekers who skied to the South Pole and summited Kilimanjaro, Stanger weaves a buoyant mix of inspiration, personal experience, and nuts and bolts tips (she recommends, for instance, taking a wilderness first aid class before embarking on a backcountry adventure). Those looking to break in their hiking boots will want to pick this up.
