Evening Reading with Kurt Hoelting in the Hay Barn
Thursday, September 25th from 6:30 - 8pm.
FREE. Books will be available for sale

Zen Teacher & Wilderness Guide Kurt Hoelting, author of Apprentice to the Wild

ISBN 979-8-0017400-2-9
176 pages $20

Please contact: editor@emptybowl.org or 206 909 8128
Available through emptybowl.org and Asterism Books to booksellers

In Apprentice to the Wild, long-time wilderness guide and meditation teacher Kurt Hoelting charts the evolution of his path from his early encounters with wildness and risk on commercial fishing vessels in Alaska to his embrace of Zen practice as a gateway to the wild within. Inspired by the words and friendship of Gary Snyder, Hoelting founded Inside Passages, guiding mindfulness-based kayaking expeditions in Alaska focused on how the “practice of the wild” informs both our inner and outer landscapes. In later essays, he reveals the role of grief as teacher in his own life and discovers what it means to become an elder in turbulent times. With honesty and wisdom, Hoelting offers timely advice: “In a time of profound ecological challenges, reclaiming a felt connection with the wild forces that gave birth to our species has become an essential part of our emerging survival equipment.”

Kurt Hoelting grew up by the shores of Puget Sound, working summers as a commercial fisherman and wilderness guide in Alaska for fifty years. A graduate of the University of Washington and Harvard Divinity School, he is an ordained minister and Zen student, who has blended his love of wilderness exploration with an equal passion for exploring the “wild within.” A mindfulness teacher in a variety of contexts, he served as Head Guide with Inside Passages, leading mindfulness-based sea kayaking expeditions in the Tongass region of Southeast Alaska. He makes his home on Whidbey Island.

Advance Praise for Apprentice to the Wild
“No matter how domesticated our lives may feel…we remain children of the wild.” With these words, Kurt Hoelting invites us into the wilderness around and within us. Drawing on personal experience and a range of wisdom traditions, he points us toward the wild joy into which we were born—and toward the good medicine wilderness provides for the risks, losses and griefs that come with life. I’m deeply grateful for this beautifully written handbook for a life lived fully and well.”
Parker J. Palmer, author of On the Brink of Everything, A Hidden Wholeness, and Let Your Life Speak

“So rarely do we get to sail the winds of life with such a thoughtful, insightful, and reflective thinker and feeler. This gorgeous book is a gift to those of us who worry and wonder about the earth and the unfolding of our personal path. With a poet’s elegance, a meditator’s sensitivity, and philosopher’s insight, Hoelting helps us celebrate human experience in its fragile yet shining quality. This book is a masterpiece.”
Paul Wapner, author of Is Wildness Over?

“This vivid and often lyrical memoir demonstrates that we can stand up to life’s storm surges if we maintain equanimity and contemplative awe, cultivate a capacity for joy and amazement, for humor and laughter, and forge deep human connections….I highly recommend this book. It has challenged, comforted and, I hope, changed me. May it do the same for you.”

Diana Chapman Walsh, president emerita, Wellesley College, co-founder of the Council on the Uncertain Human Future and author of The Claims of Life: A Memoir

Empty Bowl, founded in 1976 as a cooperative letterpress publisher, has produced literary anthologies, collections of poetry and essays, and books of Chinese translation, as well as, more recently, The Madrona Project series. Our mission is to publish the work of writers who share Empty Bowl’s founding purpose: the love and preservation of human communities in wild places. For more information, visit emptybowl.org.