Under the Open Skies : Finding Peace and Health in Nature

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

A guide for living outdoors and communing with the natural worldunder the open skies.

"I believe in sleeping outdoors, surrounded by tall fir trees, darkness and cold. Lying on my back and looking up at the stars, watching my breath form thin clouds."

Under the Open Skies is one mans perspective-shifting, immersive journey into the wilds of northern Sweden and into his own soul.

For four years, Markus Torgeby lived alone in a hut he built with his hands in the Jmtland forest on the northern tip of Sweden, reconnecting with nature, and healing from the stress and strain of urban life and an athletic career derailed by injury.

For Markus, living in the forest provided something concretecool winter air on his face, a cotton canvas of clouds overhead, wet clothes drying over the fire. Free from the constraints of modernity, his only responsibilities were the basics of survivalshelter, heat, food. Rooted on the ground under a bed of leaves, with his head finally aligned with his body, Markus found the solitude and silence he needed to be reborn.

In this moving elegy, Markus offers lessons both practicalhow to make fire, how to craft an outdoor bed, how to tap trees for waterand profoundwhat it means to become one with the natural world, to live authentically, to reconnect with yourself and your surroundings. Illustrated with 75 beautiful full-color photographs taken by his wife, Frida, Under the Open Skies is as invigorating as a long hike on a brisk morning and as sublime as a bowl of cinnamon porridge at the end of a long day. It is an invitationto the stressed, disconnected, and lonely, to all who yearn to unplug and slow down, to those who wonder how life got so complicatedto come home to nature, to open the mind and heart to the wide-open sky.