Eyes of the Wild: Journeys of Transformation with the Animal Powers

Winner of the 2014 Nautilus Gold Book Award for Nature/Animals

“The best book I have read in years. I read and savoured every word and never wanted this book to end.” Maddy Harland, Editor Permaculture Magazine.

“Eyes of the Wild is a rare and wonderful book that takes you deeper into the wild places on many levels”. Rick Minter, Editor, Journal British Association Nature Conservation

“A lovely, impossible-to-categorise book…utterly delicious to read, a unique and fascinating blend of personal experience, science, shamanic wisdom and storytelling.” Marion Eyck Mackain, Editor, Greenspirit Magazine.

“I could not recommend this book more highly. Eleanor O’Hanlon takes the reader on a remarkable personal journey of close encounters, which are both riveting and deeply moving.” Dick Russell, author, Eye of the Whale Epic Passage from Baja to Siberia

“It has become a cliché to say of books that they are ‘important’ or ‘beautifully written’. Yet this book is truly both. It is one that touches on our deepest bonds with animals, with Life and the Universe. Whether it is grey whales, wolves, brown and polar bears, or horses, O’Hanlon writes deeply of how humans interact with wild, self-willed, life. In the first chapter, there is a breath-taking description of her encounter with a grey whale, how it came up to her and let it touch her. It is almost as if they know that now is the time when we might listen, when we might see them in their wondrous beauty. It is a time when they reach out in forgiveness for our past slaughter. O’Hanlon does not preach or bury the reader under scientific fact, rather she draws the reader into the labyrinth of these wild and beautiful beings. The way she expresses her connection to both place and animals, reminds me of Thoreau. She writes of the ‘expansion of open spaces’ and how ‘In that great spaciousness of nature, we find our own expansiveness again’. She notes ‘As the mind falls still, space opens within. And that space is not separate from Eternal Presence, holding all life as one and allowing it to be – growing, blossoming, dying and reemerging in all its manifold diversity and grace.’
This is not a journey of ‘nature red in tooth and claw’ but one of passionate discovery. I found this book rekindled and inspired my own connection with the wild Dr Haydon Washington, author, Human Dependance on Nature