Return: A Journey Back to Living Wild

Lynx Vilden

☕︎☕︎☕︎

The premise here is genuinely compelling. A life stripped back to its wildest essentials, a guide to rewilding from someone who has actually done it. Unfortunately, the execution doesn't live up to the idea. Vilden comes off as judgmental and slightly pompous about her relationship with people, an arrogance that permeates the whole book and reaches its peak in the fumble of an ending. It's a shame, because nature at its core is about community, and that spirit is almost entirely absent here.

The biggest issue is structural: there's no real plot, and the character development is thin throughout. Without either of those anchors, the narrative drifts. You keep waiting for something to build, a relationship to deepen, a turning point to land, and it largely doesn't.

There's real knowledge here about primitive skills and living close to the land, but it gets lost without a stronger narrative frame to carry it. If the subject genuinely calls to you, your time is better spent with Braiding Sweetgrass or Desert Solitaire, both further up the Trail Reads list for good reason.