Chasing Wilderness with Cal Flyn (and Gary Snyder)

For thousands of years, people have dreamed of walking off the map — lighting out for the remote unknown, into landscapes untouched and untamed. The classic wilderness quest is as old as literature itself: you go into the wild, and you come out changed. It's woven into ancient spiritual texts, medieval myths, and European accounts of the so-called "New World." But wilderness is an idea as slippery as it is powerful — and wilderness preservation is a complicated and often costly ideal. That's the territory Cal Flyn explores in her new book, The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness. An award-winning writer, Flyn has traveled — often alone — into some of the most remote and forbidding places on Earth: a desert monastery on Mount Sinai, deep into the Amazon rainforest, up a Tibetan mountain pass, and inside an erupting Icelandic volcano. She gets there by river skiff, deep-sea submersible, helicopter, and horseback, and along the way she finds moments of sheer wonder — and real danger. We talk with Flyn about the history of this ancient idea and why humans keep chasing it. With nearly 8 billion people on the planet, almost no place is truly untouched. So what IS wilderness? Why do we keep seeking it? And who pays the price? Plus: Steve talks with legendary poet and environmental writer Gary Snyder — now 96, once a friend of the Beats and a Zen apprentice in 1950s Japan — about his classic book The Practice of the Wild. Snyder also reads two poems. This is an excerpt from an archival conversation. The original aired on Wisconsin Public Radio’s To The Best Of Our Knowledge. This Wonder Cabinet episode was not funded, endorsed or affiliated with Wisconsin Public Media or the University of Wisconsin-Madison. — 00:00:00 In Search of Wilderness 00:03:00 Cal Flyn on The Savage Landscape 00:32:40 The Sublime, Taboos and Sacred Groves 00:49:55 From the TTBOOK Archive: Gary Snyder 01:00:15 Credits and Farewell — Cal Flyn’s website Cal Flyn on Insta Book: “The Savage Landscape: How We Made the Wilderness” Book: “Islands of Abandonment” Read more about Gary Snyder at The Poetry Foundation Read “Piute Creek” by Gary Snyder Read “Ripples on the Surface” by Gary Snyder Uncut Gary Snyder interview from TTBOOK Wonder Cabinet is hosted by Anne Strainchamps and Steve Paulson. Find out more about the show at https://wondercabinetproductions.com, where you can subscribe to the podcast and our newsletter.