Savage Park : A Meditation on Play, Space, and Risk for Americans Who Are Nervous, Distracted, and Afraid to Die

"A fascinating and daresay essential meditation on childhood, parenthood, and the importance of wild spaces for those wild creatures known as kids."—Dave Eggers How fully can the world be explored when you are focused on trying not to die? This is the question that lies at the heart of Amy Fusselman’s Savage Park. America is the land of safety, of protecting children to make sure that nothing can possibly hurt them. But while on a trip to Tokyo with her family, Fusselman stumbled upon an adventure playground called Hanegi Playpark, where children sawed wood, hammered nails, and built open fires. Her conceptions of space, risk, and play were shattered. In asking us to reexamine fundamental ideas about our approaches to space and risk and how we pass these concepts down to our children, Fusselman also asks us to look at the world in a different way. Perhaps it isn’t variety, but fear that is the spice of life. This startling revelation is at the heart of Savage Park, and will make readers look at the world in a whole new way. “I yield to no one in my admiration for Amy Fusselman’s work. Her new book, Savage Park , further explores with astonishing power, eloquence, precision, and acid humor her obsessive, necessary theme: the gossamer-thin separation between life and death.” —David Shields, author of Reality Hunger “In this unusually refreshing meditation (which reads like a novel), we are given a tour of the space around and within us. With poetic efficiency Amy Fusselman reveals what makes us savage or not; why secret, wild spaces are essential; and why playing should be taken seriously.” —Philippe Petit, high-wire artist "Part memoir, part manifesto, this exploration of the underside of America's obsession with safety is prompted by the author's visit to a thrillingly alarming adventure playground in Tokyo "How fully can the world be explored," asks Amy Fusselman ". if you are also trying not to die?" On a visit to Tokyo with her family, Fusselman stumbles on Hanegi playpark, where children are sawing wood, hammering nails, stringing hammocks to trees, building open fires. When she returns to New York, her conceptions of space, risk, and fear are completely changed. Fusselman invites us along on her tightrope-walking expeditions with Philippe Petit and late night adventures with the Tokyo park-workers, showing that when we deprive ourselves, and our children, of the experience of taking risks in space, we make them less safe, not more so. Savage Park is a fresh, poetic reconsideration of behaviors in our culture that -- in the guise of protecting us -- make us numb and encourage us to sleepwalk through our lives. We babyproof our homes; plug our ears to our devices while walking through the city. What would happen if we exposed ourselves, if -- like the children at Hanegi park -- we put ourselves in situations that require true vigilance? Readers of Rebecca Solnit and Cheryl Strayed will delight in the revelations in Savage Park"-- Provided by publisher