Unwilded

Alastair Humphreys explores how our shift from lives immersed in nature to repetitive indoor routines has harmed our wellbeing, sense of connection and, in turn, the planet. It shows how we can quietly begin to restore what we have lost by going outside and paying attention to the wild beauty around us.

Humans used to be embedded in the natural world, but today many of us live sedentary screen-based lives indoors, treating nature as something distant – to be watched on television or reached by flying elsewhere.

In Unwilded, Alastair Humphreys examines the consequences of this disconnection and how it shapes our wellbeing, childhood, education, diets, lifestyles and the liveability of towns. On a wider scale, it explains why the climate and ecological emergencies feel abstract and beyond our individual responsibility.

At the heart of the book is shifting baseline syndrome: from the felling of the Sycamore Gap tree to the extinction of the most abundant bird species in history, the passenger pigeon, it is the quiet process by which each generation accepts a depleted world as normal. 

Unwilded argues that change need not begin with grand gestures. It can begin with spending just fifteen minutes outdoors, paying attention. From nothing comes understanding, care and responsibility – and the beginning of rewilding ourselves and the world.