Way of the Wild Heart A Map for the Masculine Journey

Introduction One of the most haunting experiences I have ever had as a man took place on an early summer day in Alaska. My family and I were sea kayaking with humpback whales in the Icy Strait, and we stopped on the shore of Chichagof Island for lunch. Our guide asked us if we wanted to go for a hike into the interior of the island, to a clearing where grizzlies were known to feed. We were all over that invitation. After a twenty minute walk through a spruce forest, we came into what appeared to be a broad, open meadow about four hundred yards across. Being midday, and hot, there were no bears to be seen. "They're sleeping now, through the afternoon. They'll be back tonight," he said. "C'mere--I want to show you something." The meadow was actually more of a bog, a low-lying jungle of brushy groundcover about two feet high, barely supported underneath by another foot of soaked moss and peat. A very difficult place to walk. Our guide led us to a trail of what seemed to be massive footprints, with a stride of about two feet between them, pressed down into the bog and making a path through it. "It's a marked trail," he said. A path created by the footprints of the bears. "This one is probably centuries old. For as long as the bears have been on this island, they've taken this path. The cubs follow their elders, putting their feet exactly where the older bears walk. That's how they learn to cross this place." I began to walk in the marked trail, stepping into the firm, deep-worn places where bears had walked for centuries. I'm not sure how to describe the experience, but for some reason the word holy comes to mind. An ancient and fearful path through a wild and untamed place. I was following a proven way, laid down by those much stronger and far more prepared for this place than me. And though I knew I did not belong there, I was haunted by it, could have followed that path for a long, long time. It awakened some deep, ancient yearning in me. This is a book about what it looks like to become a man, and --far more to our need-- how to become a man. There is no more hazardous undertaking, this business of "becoming a man," full of dangers, counterfeits, and disasters. It is the Great Trial of every man's life, played out over time, and every male young and old finds himself in this journey. Though there are few who find their way through. Our perilous journey has been made all the more difficult because we live in a time with very little direction. A time with very few fathers to show us the way. As men, we desperately need something like that marked trail on Chichagof Island. Not more rules, not another list of principles, not formulas. A sure path, marked by men for centuries before us. I believe we can find it. What you are holding in your hands is, as the cover indicates, a map. It chronicles the stages of the masculine journey from boyhood to old age. This is not a book of clinical psychology, nor a manual of child development. For one, I am unqualified to write that sort of book. Further, I find them unreadable. Ponderous. Boring. What do you recall of your psychology textbook from high school or college? But I do love maps. Most men do. The pleasure of a map is that it gives you the lay of the land, and yet you still have to make choices about how you will cover the terrain before you. A map is a guide, not a formula. It offers freedom. It does not tell you how fast to walk, though when you see the contour lines growing very close together, you know you are approaching steep terrain and will want to mend your stride. It does not tell you why the mountain is there, or how old the forest is. It tells you how to get where you are going. I am keenly aware of the book's insufficiencies. There will be those who say, "But he did not address. . . ." Fill in the blank. Moral devEldredge, John is the author of 'Way of the Wild Heart A Map for the Masculine Journey', published 2006 under ISBN 9780785206774 and ISBN 0785206779.