"Pilgrims to the Wild "is a survey of American writers who have responded to their encounters with the natural world. Ranging in its treatment from Thoreau s important but neglected essay, 'Walking, ' to the exuberant letters of the young artist Everett Ruess (who disappeared in the Escalante canyonlands), this is a broadly based exploration that brings to bear Eastern and Western classical philosophy, as well as contemporary critical theory, on a distinctive tradition of American Writing those works concerned with the human relationship to the nonhuman world.

In addition to offering a...

"Overheard in a coffee shop the other day, one young woman severely admonishing another about the dangers of amateur seances: 'Just one wrong move, and Poof Suddenly every dead rock star and TV evangelist is knocking at your door and forcing you to bake ten thousand apple pies. You can t trust these ghosts. They have a mind of their own.'"
from the book

Just because this is a collection of essays about psychics, murderers, strange disappearances, and occult phenomena doesn t mean it isn t funny. With wit, wry curiosity, and redemptive irony John P. O Grady peels back the surface of...