Writer and journal-therapy facilitator Mary Reynolds Thompson has published The Wild Scribe: Words That Emerge When Human and Earth Voices Entwine, a practical book that uses nature writing to examine belonging, attention and people’s relationship with the living world. Released by Findhorn Press on October 20, 2026, the 256-page book brings together reflective essays, writing exercises and material developed through Thompson’s work with nature-writing communities.
The book is organized around ten themed sessions, each offering stories, prompts and exercises. Rather than treating a journal as a record of things seen outdoors, Thompson asks readers to notice how places, seasons, plants and animals influence their language and sense of themselves. The approach is intended to make writing a participatory experience rather than an exercise in describing scenery from a distance.
Specific techniques include character sketches of plants and animals, seasonal observation, haiku and haibun, a Japanese form combining prose and poetry. The book also addresses solastalgia, a term used for distress associated with environmental change, and climate grief. Those subjects place it within a growing area of personal development concerned with how people process their emotional responses to ecological loss.
Thompson is the founder of Live Your Wild Soul Story and has worked as a facilitator of journal and poetry therapy. Her previous book, Reclaiming the Wild Soul, also addressed relationships between inner experience and the natural world. In the new publication, she places particular emphasis on what she calls wild language: writing that develops through sustained attention to one’s surroundings rather than through predetermined descriptions or polished literary performance.
An excerpt provided by the publisher explains that the project grew during the Covid period, when reduced travel and social contact changed the ways many people experienced nearby natural spaces. Thompson moved her existing nature-writing workshop online during that period, bringing participants together around observation, creativity and a shared connection to place. The new book draws on that wider practice, including contributions from students.
Its potential audience extends beyond writers. The publisher identifies forest-bathing guides, ecotherapists, eco-coaches and teachers of journaling as readers who may find the exercises relevant to their work. The book has a foreword by Christina Baldwin and includes illustrations by Jo Smith made using natural dyes.
The publication does not present journaling as a substitute for mental health care or a proven treatment for climate-related distress. Its contribution is more specific: a structured way to explore how creative attention to the environment may influence personal reflection, expression and the sense of connection people experience with a place.
Source: Mary Reynolds Thompson
Web: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Wild-Scribe/Mary-Reynolds-Thompson/9798888506042
