What is the wild? What is our relationship to nature, and why does this relationship matter? We will interrogate these questions through the work of influential, diverse, primarily American environmental writers who have given voice to many ways of knowing the wonder, fragility, complexity, and power of the natural world and have inspired readers to act on behalf of social-environmental causes. This course centers the work of diverse voices, including Indigenous, Black, and Chicana writers, enabling us to consider some of the many ways that people have understood and experienced nature throughout history and the relevance of these manifold ways of knowing to our conceptualizations of nature today. Students will develop their responses to the question of what is the wild and why it matters through a series of synchronous and asynchronous in-the-field writing exercises that integrate personal narrative and environmental scholarship, culminating in a ~3000-word narrative nonfiction essay.