The Wild Within Author:Paul Rezendes As Jon Krakauer writes of "the dark side of the wilderness experience," Paul Rezendes writes of the spiritual side. Rezendes is one of this country's most skilled outdoorsmen: a master wildlife tracker with an uncanny ability to communicate the profound lessons he has learned from the wild about territoriality, awareness, fear, the inseparabili... more »ty of life and death, and the true nature of the self. Through hard personal experience, Rezendes discovered how tracking can be a powerful tool for understanding our deep connections with nature and with one another. The leader of two notorious motorcycle gangs in the early 1960s, he faced a ten-year prison sentence for drugs and illegal weapons charges. His sentence was revoked, and Rezendes transformed his life path from gang leader to Zen master, founding an ashram in southeastern Massachusetts and honing the tracking skills with which he was raised. In The Wild Within, Rezendes punctuates a gripping narrative of his wilderness adventures with simple exercises that show readers how to turn off their conscious minds and use their deeper intelligence to enter a state of oneness with the environment and to deal more effectively with daily life. In the words of Dianne Dumanoski of the Boston Globe, "Paul Rezendes's [work] is about tracking, but also much more; it shows how to find your way home to the great web of life."« less