The Making Of

A Wild Soul

My personal journey of birthing & becoming ‘From the Wild’

From the get-go, I had a clear mission in creating this musical anthology, but it was one I had to live into, to actually experience…

To put it simply, I set out to fall in love with this place.

These beloved lands.

Even the pulse of wild nature in my own veins.

I began writing the title song in 2013, as its theme beckoned me to trace my roots back to the natural world from which I came…

See, there’s a reason it’s called from the wild, and not into the wild. I wasn’t setting off for somewhere new, but rather to return to what was there all along.

“there’s a reason it’s called from the wild, and not into the wild”

How many times have we heard, “he went into the wild,” or “let’s go into nature?” But as I see it, we are always in nature, we already are nature—we just have to notice what is all around us (yes, even in the midst of pavement and high-rises), and starting where we are, to remember what we are made of.

So rather than focus solely on epic excursions*, more often my practice of “rewilding” has simply meant making friends with the natural world in my everyday life.

(*you can read about some of those beautiful & majestic places—and how their primordial wildness has infused this music—in the place-by-place tracklist below)

For the truth is, pretty much everywhere has its majesties, if you begin to look…

And once I started looking, even when home and amidst my daily routines, I started finding so much beauty and wonder and wild.

Basically, I got interested.

I started wondering who the creatures were in the air, in the trees, hiding in the thickets… My neighbors! I got curious what different trees grow around me—whether introduced from far continents or growing for millennia on this one—and how they harbor so much life, offer shade, and even interact with one another. My eyes started opening to the many growing things at my feet—even in the city, there are so many more medicinal and edible plants than I’d imagined! (To say nothing of how they serve the needs of my non-human neighbors!)

“this has not been a theoretical or abstract practice”

Indeed, reconnecting with wild nature has not been a theoretical or abstract practice. Inspired by the beauty I see, I find ways to engage: to offer flowers for the pollinators and water for all creatures, to endeavor to bring back balance where invasives have taken over, and to plant things that will allow our human-disturbed ecosystems to rebound & flourish. For the benefit of all critters.

I’ve heard the too-close curious snuffing of bears, fed daily kitchen scraps to a winter-weary bunny, followed fox tracks following mouse tracks in the snow, become familiar with the songs and chatter of countless birds, made friends with many a squirrel, and spent innumerable nights up with the owls…

I suppose the truth might be that I consider myself one of them—just another animal.

“both its limitations and its longings”

As a human animal, remembering the “wild” has meant tending the simple truth of my own natural yet mortal body—both its limitations and its longings. I continually care for its rhythms and its changes—both the seasonal ones and the longer-term. I’ve lived close enough to the edge to know what it is to be too hot, too cold, too lonesome… I know both fatigue and exhilaration, sorrow and delight… And I know the comfort of just-enough, and the preciousness of every drop of love.

“in a state of wonder”

These simple gifts and humble practices are the lodestars that guide me. They keep me in relationship with the more-than-human world, or as one could simply call it, the world. They keep me engaged with the textures and smells and changes of seasons. They keep me in my body and my heart. And they keep me in a state of wonder.

In crafting From the Wild, I kept walking, witnessing, and singing-with… And in filling myself with such beauty—in both my adventures and my everyday—I continually asked, “how can I bring this beauty, this vitality, to these songs?”

Sometimes the answer was to bring in the actual voices of the birds, the ocean waves, the trickling streams… (you can hear them in the songs if you listen closely!)

“I had to be the wild I was singing about”

And sometimes the answer was that I had to be the wild I was singing about. Because as I said earlier, I didn’t want to merely sing about, or even to—but I wanted to sing from…the wild.

I hope some of this journey—both the inner and outer—conveys in the music you hear, and that maybe it transports you to some of the places I sing of. My greatest hope, though, is that it will evoke your own curiosity, that it might inspire you to find more ways to engage with the more-than-human world right outside your own door. And most of all, that it may open your heart.

“a love song to the natural world”

For if this album is to anything, it is a love song to the natural world. Or as some would call it, the world 😉

In closing this little reminisce, I want to take a moment and give thanks to Fernando Medina for always encouraging more daring in my songs (and adding it with his drums!). And also to David Bergeaud (who expertly mixed and mastered the album) for explicitly inviting me to re-record my vocals on several of the songs. A little over a year ago he said to me (with all kindness), “I think you can do better. I think you can sing with more of the wildness you speak of.” He was right.

And so inspired by those two fine gentlemen and the unending beauty the world over, I dug deep, I danced, I remembered the winds that have torn through my hair, I even sipped a bit of whiskey… And I sang again—for the wild, from the wild…

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