Personal Rewilding:
Finding a Deep Nature Connection

What is personal rewilding?

Personal rewilding is about establishing and nurturing a deep nature connection. It’s finding happiness and meaning away from the artificial pressures of modern life.

The best way to describe it might be to think back to your childhood. Do you remember the carefree feel of wet grass beneath your bare feet? The taste of summer raspberries plucked and eaten still warm from the bush? The sway of a tree beneath you while you climbed amongst the branches? 

What about the joy of splashing through a mudpuddle, or wading into a snowdrift just to feel the icy bite of cold against your skin. Or the bliss of lying down in a meadow of wildflowers?

Perhaps you didn’t experience ALL these things in your childhood, but certainly you remember the brisk, alive feeling of something very like them.

When was the last time you did them? How long has it been since the thought of something so seemingly frivolous crossed your mind?

Rediscovering Our Roots

Personal rewilding is all these things. But that is only a part.

It is also about remembering our lost roots and shaking off the stale rat race. It is about starting change, however small and independent, with ourselves. It is about finding meaning in our day-to-day relationships and escaping the addictive cycle of virtual living.

It is about living simply, connecting with nature, and sustainable living.

What is "Rewilding"?

Rewilding refers to the concept of bringing the wild back into nature – replanting native species, reintroducing native animals. In short, attempting to bring nature back to the state of balance it existed in before human population growth, industry, and technology forever changed things.

These are big concepts and ideas - reintroducing biodiversity; removing or reducing the human footprint.

Like all global-scale problems and potential solutions, the scale is overwhelming to the individual.


"Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit, and as vital to our lives as water and good bread."

-Edward Abbey

Personal Rewilding - Restoration of a midwestern prairie

Why "Personal Rewilding"?

The overwhelming nature of those global-scale problems is where personal rewilding comes in. So much seems out of our control, beyond our grasp, that we can't fathom where to even begin.  

Personal rewilding, at its core, is about what one individual or family can do to forge a deep nature connection and begin living a simpler, more meaningful, and ultimately more sustainable life.

Breaking Busy

Modern life is chaotic. We are bombarded by information, sensationalized news, social interaction, work, technology, advertisements, societal expectations, and political slant. In short, by all the myriad pressures of a capitalist culture. 

The modern ideal encourages us to work longer hours, buy more things, impress (or overshadow) the neighbors, groom the lawn, upgrade the house, upgrade the car, upgrade the smartphone, and swing past the Starbucks (or the McDonald’s or the 7-11) for a plastic drink.

In the words of E.E. Cummings: “Pity this busy monster, manunkind, not.”

This routine has become so pervasive that we scarcely notice it.

Until we do. 

If you’re here, you’ve discovered that there’s a breaking point. This form of existence, with its artificial sweeteners and cellophane packaging and Instagram influencers, feels empty.

Worse than empty, because it’s harmful. 

That snowballing need for constant growth is changing our planet at an ever-accelerating rate, and not for the better.

We long for true connections. For simplicity, a deep nature connection, real tastes and textures, the feel of dewed grass beneath our bare feet and the smell of home-baked bread. 

We long for meaningful communication with like-minded people, not pithy 280-character tweets.


"I am well again. I came to life in the cool winds and the crystal waters of the mountains."

-John Muir

The Path to Simple Living

This website has three primary purposes:

  • To explore the many ways in which we can simplify and bring meaning into our daily lives while forging a deep nature connection and minimizing our impact on the environment
  • To create a welcoming community of individuals with similar goals and share our learnings, mistakes, and experiences

I hope you’ll join in our shared quest for personal rewilding. Like you, we’ll be learning as we go.

Come on a walk with us. Kick off your shoes. Let the mud press up between your toes. Like Ralph Waldo Emerson, we will “Live in the sunshine. Drink the wild air.” 

Leave only footprints behind you.