Jack Turner: The Abstract Wild

It’s important to note, however, that although the birth of Christianity has had some impact on our predominant attitudes towards nature, there are those in the world today who still embrace the belief that although humans have forgotten their intrinsic connection to the natural world, our “unitive companionship,” as Zimmer puts it, with the natural world still exists.  Jack Turner, in his book The Abstract Wild, (1996) says we have forgotten “the reciprocity between the wild in nature and the wild in us, between knowledge of the wild and knowledge of the self that was central to all primitive cultures” (Turner 11).  The “reciprocity” Turner refers to derives from our “primitive” connection to the natural world, our organic and historic connection to nature which is intrinsic because we are born from the same fabric.