When thinking of the wilderness one might picture a scene from a camp site. Untamed dense forest, and endless jungle probably come first to mind and although this might be one meaning of wilderness, Mellor’s perception of wilderness and pastoral opens our thoughts on how we view the unpredictable and the known. In “Lure Of The Wilderness” by Leo Mellor, he shows the meaning of the unexplored wilderness and the surprises that come with the unknown, while humans try to tame what is wild and create a pastoral environment around them. Mellor’s writing helps understand hidden aspects in the short story “Wild” by Lesley Arimah, when Ada is blindsided with a plane ticket to visit her aunt in Africa. She travels to a place mostly unknown to her, besides the relatives living there. It might seem that Ada does not like to reach out and try something that could be considered out of the norm. Yet, she travels to an unknown mostly foreign to her given the past years of her childhood. It challenges Ada to change her perspective on certain aspects of her life, helping her overcome the wilderness she finds emerged in. Thus, when Mellor’s idea of wilderness in his essay are applied to “Wild”, it can be realized that Ada not only journeys into the wilderness, but starts to let it transform her into a new person, helping her develop a more pastoral environment around her and making her realize that the relationships back in the U.S. meant more to her than she had previously thought. Ada is