| Author | John Lewis-Stempel |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Nature, Survival, Foraging |
| Publisher | Transworld Publishers |
Publication date | 18 March 2010 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 304 |
The Wild Life: A Year of Living on Wild Food is a non-fiction book by British author John Lewis-Stempel. It documents his experiment of spending a full year eating only food that he could hunt, gather, or forage from his forty-acre farm.
In The Wild Life, John Lewis-Stempel embarks on a year-long journey of subsisting entirely on wild food. His experiences range from training a reluctant gundog, Edith, to concocting new recipes with his foraged findings. Lewis-Stempel's approach is not only about survival but also about gaining a deeper understanding and appreciation of the land.
The book received acclaim for its honest and engaging portrayal of living off the land. Robert Macfarlane, author of The Wild Places, praised it for its blend of humor, honesty, and insightful commentary on the land. [1] [ better source needed ] The Sunday Telegraph highlighted its fascinating account and meditative quality. [2] The Ecologist described it as an"initiatory and spiritual journey", "a life lesson for us all". [3]
 |
The Wild Life explores themes of survival, human-nature connection, and the concept of land as both a resource and a sanctuary. Lewis-Stempel's journey concerns both physical survival and the rediscovery of a lost connection to the natural world. The book covers the philosophical and ethical dimensions of foraging and living off the land in the modern world.
Survivalism is a social movement of individuals or groups who proactively prepare for emergencies, such as natural disasters, and other disasters causing disruption to social order caused by political or economic crises. Preparations may anticipate short-term scenarios or long-term, on scales ranging from personal adversity, to local disruption of services, to international or global catastrophe. There is no bright line dividing general emergency preparedness from prepping in the form of survivalism, but a qualitative distinction is often recognized whereby preppers/survivalists prepare especially extensively because they have higher estimations of the risk of catastrophes happening. Nonetheless, prepping can be as limited as preparing for a personal emergency, or it can be as extensive as a personal identity or collective identity with a devoted lifestyle.
A back-to-the-land movement is any of various agrarian movements across different historical periods. The common thread is a call for people to take up smallholding and to grow food from the land with an emphasis on a greater degree of self-sufficiency, autonomy, and local community than found in a prevailing industrial or postindustrial way of life. There have been a variety of motives behind such movements, such as social reform, land reform, and civilian war efforts. Groups involved have included political reformers, counterculture hippies, and religious separatists.
The San peoples, or Bushmen, are the members of any of the indigenous hunter-gatherer cultures of southern Africa, and the oldest surviving cultures of the region. Their recent ancestral territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and South Africa.
Foraging is searching for wild food resources. It affects an animal's fitness because it plays an important role in an animal's ability to survive and reproduce. Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavior of animals in response to the environment where the animal lives.
Raymond Paul Mears is a British woodsman, instructor, businessman, author and TV presenter. His TV appearances cover bushcraft and survival techniques.
Edward René David Goldsmith, widely known as Teddy Goldsmith, was an Anglo-French environmentalist, writer and philosopher.
Edward Michael "Bear" Grylls is a British former SAS trooper who is a survival expert, adventurer, and television presenter. He first drew attention after embarking on a number of notable adventures, including several world records in hostile environments, and then became widely known for his television series Man vs. Wild (2006–2011). He is also involved in a number of wilderness survival television series in the UK and US, such as Running Wild with Bear Grylls and The Island with Bear Grylls. In July 2009, Grylls was appointed as The Scout Association’s youngest-ever Chief Scout of the United Kingdom and Overseas Territories at age 35, a post he has held for a second term since 2015 and in 2024 became the 2nd longest serving Chief Scout after Robert Baden-Powell.
Benjamin Myer Fogle, is an English broadcaster, writer and adventurer, best known for his presenting roles with British television channels Channel 5, BBC and ITV.
Timothy John Jarvis is an English and Australian explorer, climber, author, environmental activist, and documentary filmmaker. He is best known for his numerous Antarctic expeditions, particularly his attempted Antarctic crossing in 1999 and the period recreations of historical treks by Sir Douglas Mawson and Sir Ernest Shackleton.
Les Stroud is a Canadian survival expert, filmmaker and musician best known as the creator, writer, producer, director, cameraman and host of the television series Survivorman. Stroud was named Chief Scout by Scouts Canada on 22 November 2021. After a short career behind the scenes in the music industry, Stroud became a full-time wilderness guide, survival instructor and musician based in Huntsville, Ontario. Stroud has produced survival-themed programming for The Outdoor Life Network, The Discovery Channel, The Science Channel, and YTV. The survival skills imparted from watching Stroud's television programs have been cited by several people as the reason they lived through harrowing wilderness ordeals.
The Martu (Mardu) are a grouping of several Aboriginal Australian peoples in the Western Desert cultural bloc.
Rose hip soup is a Swedish soup made from rose hips. It is served as a beverage or as a dessert with milk, cream or vanilla ice cream along with small almond biscuits.
Bradford Angier was an American wilderness survivalist and proponent of back-to-earth living. He authored more than 35 books on how to survive in the wild and how to live minimalisticly off the land.
The Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards celebrate the best travel writing and travel writers in the world. The awards include the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year and the Edward Stanford Award for Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing.
John Lewis-Stempel is an English farmer, writer, and Sunday Times Top 5 best selling author.
Andy Hamilton is an English writer of four books, The Selfsufficientish BibleBooze for Free, Brewing Britain and Fermenting Everything. He has written for Wired, The Guardian and The Ecologist. He was born in Northampton and now lives in Bristol.
Wild: An Elemental Journey is a 2006 book about travel in Earth's wildernesses by the British writer Jay Griffiths.
The ecology of fear is a conceptual framework describing the psychological impact that predator-induced stress experienced by animals has on populations and ecosystems. Within ecology, the impact of predators has been traditionally viewed as limited to the animals that they directly kill, while the ecology of fear advances evidence that predators may have a far more substantial impact on the individuals that they predate, reducing fecundity, survival and population sizes. To avoid being killed, animals that are preyed upon will employ anti-predator defenses which aid survival but may carry substantial costs.
Meadowland: The Private Life of an English Field is a non-fiction book by British author John Lewis-Stempel, focusing on the natural history of an English field throughout a year. The book provides a detailed account of the flora and fauna of the English countryside and is notable for its deep observation and reflection on nature.
The Wood: The Life and Times of Cockshutt Wood is a non-fiction book by British author John Lewis-Stempel. Written in a diary format, it chronicles Lewis-Stempel's experiences managing Cockshutt Wood, a mixed woodland in Herefordshire. The book, which covers the final year of his stewardship, reflects on the importance of such woodlands in the British countryside and their rich biodiversity.