Ecologist David Abram recounts how his senses came vividly alive while he was in Indonesia on a research grant to study sorcerers. Returning to America he found that he — and many others — were estranged from the expressive and animate earth. Abram uses the practices of indigenous peoples and the philosophy of phenomenologists to explore the body's unique capacities to interact with other species and the diverse environments they inhabit.

The author contends that language and literacy have defused "the participating life of the senses, prompting a massive distrust of sensorial experience." It is time for us to reconnect with "the many-voiced landscape." Abram sounds a clarion call for "a rejuvenation of our carnal, sensorial empathy with the living land that sustains us."