Wild Running: Lessons from Dogs, Wolves, and the Natural World (A Memoir)
When ultrarunner Rebecca Wallick was in her forties, a life-altering medical diagnosis upended her world. Running away from both emotional and physical pain, in 2005 she and her two Alaskan Malamutes moved to rural Idaho to forge a new life of solitude. Together, they began exploring remote trails in the vast wildness of the Salmon River Mountains, reveling in the natural world. Wallick shares lyrical descriptions of wildlife encountered while running trails in all seasons with her dogs, including one quiet summer morning in 2006, when a magical encounter with a gray wolf made a transformative impression.
Unbeknownst to Wallick, by moving to Idaho’s mountains, she and her wolf-like Malamutes landed in the middle of heated discussions and passionate opinions regarding the reintroduction of gray wolves in the West. When hunting of wolves became legal in Idaho, running forest trails with her dogs—who were often mistaken for wolves—made the issue both keenly personal and potentially dangerous.
In Wild Running, Wallick not only chronicles her “running with dogs” life but also provides history and context for the ongoing debates, enduring myths, and cultural wars following gray wolves as they expand their territory across the West.
In this insight-filled memoir, Wallick testifies to the power of dogs: to their companionship, the ways they connect us with the natural world, and the solace they provide when life throws us curveballs.
—Claudia Kawczynska, Founder, The Bark magazine and Editor-in-chief of The Bark and TheBark.com
Wallick writes a beautiful book about dogs and trail running. But really, Wild Running is about Wallick’s love affair with wildness—her own, and her dogs’—and how those dogs help her become “a part of nature.”
—Sean Prentiss, author of Finding Abbey
Plot/Idea: 9 out of 10
Originality: 9 out of 10
Prose: 8 out of 10
Character/Execution: 8 out of 10
Overall: 8.50 out of 10
Assessment:
Plot/Idea: Wallick both entertains and educates in this polished and endearing memoir. The author delivers a personal narrative while tackling tough issues relating to wildlife and, more specifically, the important relationship between dogs and their ancestors, and people. Readers will learn plenty about dogs and will come to see wolves with different eyes.
Prose: Wallick's writing is descriptive but simple, allowing the wilderness settings to fully come alive on the page.
Originality: The author's passion for running, the outdoors, dogs, and wolves shines through her work, while her emotional and psychological suffering is also movingly conveyed. Rather than purely advocating for the lives of wolves, Wallick provides an intimate framework that will impact readers.
Character/Execution: Wild Running proves alluring through its blend of autobiography and its examination of wolves–misconceptions about them, their status in the wild, and their importance to ecological systems.
Date Submitted: October 07, 2024
