Hello and welcome to Personal Rewilding! We are Adam & Carrie and we started this site with the intention of sharing our connection with nature as well as our desire to protect the dwindling bits of wilderness that remain.
We also recognize how central our connection with nature is to our happiness, our sense of meaning, and our ability to cope with the pressures of modern life.
We were fortunate enough to grow up rurally, or in small towns, and so we have known and connected with nature our entire lives. Children have an innate connection to nature. It is only as we grow into our adult roles in society, into employment and studies and families, that we lose it.
Like many people, we spent our early adulthood engaged in building a family, finding a career, and doing all the myriad "tasks" and obligations that come with that lifestyle. Like most of modern capitalist society, we were distracted by houses, corporate ladders, accumulating "stuff", and all the other things that pass for success.
It was only as we reached our early-30's, "successful" by most middle-class standards, that we realized there was something missing. This supposed success was riddled with "busy-ness", and the things that were consuming our time were not enriching or even meaningful. And we understood that the way we were living was not only wasteful but harmful.
We both recognized this but weren't sure what to do about it. Nature and the outdoors has always been a passion to us, a place we retreated to in our dwindling leisure time. But we decided that we needed a change - nature needed to be central to our lives and not on the periphery.
We decided to sell our house in town and buy a more rustic home in the country with space and air and land to nurture. That was a first step, and far from the only one. We have surrounded ourselves with the world, attended to it, spent our time in it. We've learned a lot and continue to learn:
We've focused on educating ourselves on our place in nature and learning how to be better global citizens. We're far from perfect and we have a long way to go. But you'll never write a book without a Page One.
Personal Rewilding is the next logical step. It allows us to share our passion for the natural world, pass on the things we've learned, and learn from a community of like-minded people.
We hope that you'll learn something along the way, try something new, rediscover your wonder, or contribute your knowledge to the benefit of our visitors.