BeWildReWild is a loosely-knit group of volunteers with a passion for wild things. It is also a special fund within Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation for the purpose of exploring three questions:
- What do you/we mean by wild?
- What changes are needed for us to live within the bounds of sustainability?
- How can we create a wilder, more beautiful, more biologically diverse, and a more enduring Mississippi River Watershed?
And here at the BeWildReWild Forum, it is a place for visioning, debating, storytelling, teaching, and learning.
Commentary is the lifeblood of this forum. Reply keeps the blood flowing. Individuals wishing to submit a commentary on wildness related subjects typical of those across this website should also indicate the specific plant, animal, or insect with which they most often identify. Potential commentaries should be emailed to rrossgipple@gmail.com. Posted commentaries will include the writer’s name and our illustration (avatar) of the writer’s preferred life form. Avatars will not be assigned to those who reply.
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A Day in the Life on the River
by Pat Schlarbaum
Wherever we find Bald Eagles, there are wild areas worth protecting. Recently four eagles were soaring with billowing cumulus clouds in the blue sky heights over southeastern Minnesota. With each revolution of concentric loops, the adult eagles’ white heads sparkled with spectacular brilliance in the distance. Life was moving along with the majestic birds riding …
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Wildness & Trust
by Autumn Rozario Hall
Trust is a tricky thing- My humble thoughts on wildness. I’m going to take a moment to share some thoughts that been rattling around in my mind. I hear the phrase ‘trust wildness’ often. It’s the single most difficult aspect of rewilding, of living, for me. I tend to worry, I tend to plan. I …
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Wilderness, Wildness, and Trust
by Roger Ross Gipple
Wilderness is a place and Wildness is a quality. Wilderness is finite and Wildness is infinite. Many of us who profess to love Wilderness are terrified of Wildness. Wilderness is a manifestation of Wildness. Wildness is inspirational. It is astonishing. It is unfamiliar and unpredictable. Wildness is life giving in the broadest sense, but it can also …
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Iowa-The Most Biologically Altered Landscape in North America
by Mark Edwards
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Whose Woods These Are….
by Leland Searles
Iowa’s remaining woodlands hold much of our remaining biodiversity. This is because woods are associated with floodplains and steep slopes that are not so useful for either cities and towns or for agriculture. But these are rich areas to begin the process of rewilding our minds and regaining our natural biodiversity and, alongside these, rewilding …
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Bringing Cultural Change
by Roger Ross Gipple
What is now called Iowa was previously one of the most biodiverse places in North America. Today it is one of the most biologically altered. From a narrow human perspective much has been gained in that process…but important things have also been lost. Valuable Iowa topsoil and nutrients are flowing toward the Gulf of Mexico. …
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Burning Buddha Alive
by Mark Edwards
Sincerely man, you see no hope? Not in denial of our death. Hope is for the helpless as heaven and hell sit on this hill both betting on tomorrow Coming back to life Today I am the prairie setting myself on fire. original 7/1/02
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Wild Times
by Leland Searles
In the summer of 2012, the Iowa Brood of seventeen-year cicadas emerged. In the mature-oak lawns of Des Moines, Iowa, in the South-of-Grand area, one could find newly surfaced bugs creeping up stems, splitting their old skins, and struggling out with crumpled, moist wings. Soon, the branches above hummed with their din. In hand, their …
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Channelization and Its Discontents
by Leland Searles
Rivers are central to our lives in ways we don’t often realize. Cities and towns across the Midwest were started along rivers, often at the confluence of a main river and a tributary. We are distant from the reasons for those choices. Still, no matter what the landform of our individual places of residence, flowing …
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The Three Questions
by Joseph Plum
1. What do you/we mean by wild? Wild is a lightening strike from within a smile. A question whose answer is balanced all the while on your ability to decide what impulses coincide with elements derived from within the Mother Ocean of our natural mind. 2. What changes are needed for us to live within …
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Beautiful, Stunning, Welcoming
by Jill Shore
Wow. This may be the most well-done website I have ever visited. Immediately when my eyes engaged, my emotional response was the sense of “beautiful,” “stunning,” “welcoming.” As I continued on, I read (saw, identified, felt) a statement (maybe even a fundamental belief) that I absolutely do not bear witness with. Yet I still felt …
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When we think of wild
by Courtney Chandrea
When we think of the wild, in our mind’s eye we see something like this: In a dark jungle, the foliage is choking out the light of the sun. A ferocious beast sneaks its way through the undergrowth. A caucophony of sound bursts out of the bugs and birds hiding in the green. Or maybe …
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We must choose to be lovers of the wild or not. What say you?
by Mark Edwards
Let’s blog a river of words we can explore, develop a wild language we can find freedom in. Wild are the words which wake in us a world where we are but part of a community, composed of cores of consciousness connected by corridors of common dreams, flowing passages in a river wiggling with all …
We must choose to be lovers of the wild or not. What say you? Read More »
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A Day in the Life on the River
“If you listen carefully enough to anything, it will talk to you.”
George Washington Carver