Narrative in the Woods

Wilderness Reflection

• When asking the question, what is wilderness? There will be a multitude of responses and no clear definition or answer. When asking what wilderness is, one must define the difference between wilderness and nature. Is nature and wilderness the same thing? The short answer is no. Wilderness has a long and complicated history when it regards to the typical term of wilderness which is a place untainted or untarnished by humans William Cronon in his essay “The Trouble with Wilderness; or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” views wilderness as a construct of colonizes and more so as a mythic conception based off of white supremacy than an actual place. Aldo Leopold’s essay “Thinking Like a Mountain” examines wilderness as a complex thing, something that is not easily taken care of, and something that has fighting perspectives. Both essays present the complex ideas that wilderness is not one thing but many things, it is simple yet complex, and both essays reveal that wilderness is something to be preserved, something to exist within and without, and nature in itself is something magnificent.

               William Cronon writes “The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” in hopes of conveying our misconception of wilderness and being able to express how the definitions of what wilderness was is very different than what it should be. The text reads “No less important was the powerful romantic attraction of primitivism, dating back at least to of that that the best antidote to the ills of an overly refine and civilized modern world was a return to simpler, more primitive living. In the United States, this was embodied most strikingly in the national myth of the frontier.” (Cronon 7) Throughout a large part of history, wilderness and the concept of this frontier was brought by the colonizers and their idealistic, romanticized version of frontier was in part to prove their manliness. Nature and the unknown are something to be feared, something to be a tamed, and fully understood and placed in the box where certain people understand it. To overcome nature, to be the master of nature, and to control it.

              Aldo Leopold’s essay “Thinking Like a Mountain” gives a new perspective on the various viewpoints of wilderness and how nature is involved with the human species. Nature is misunderstood, because of the misconception of how nature works. The text reads “We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes.” (Leopold 1) This explains how Leopold’s views become conflicted, as Leopold who grew up as a hunter, viewed animals specifically predators to be conquered and killed, until he looked face to face with a wolf. Leopold gained a new perspective that day on the delicate balance of nature and what it means to have conflicting views on how nature works, and how to co-exist and live interdependently with nature. Leopold eventually understood that to tip the balance of nature is to wreck the ecosystem. When killing a mass number of wolves, there will be more deer and other animals who eat the shrubs and greenery, which effects the woods and insects and bacteria. This is a small way where humans can affect the ecosystem on a large scale and impact the way life works.

              Throughout the course of history, as viewed from these essays, the majority of humans have a negative impact on wilderness. In Cronon’s essay, it emphasizes that colonizers called the wilderness and the concept of the frontier as inhabited, as in fact it was very much inhabited by Native Americans. As his essay reads “The removal of Indians to create an uninhabited wilderness’ –uninhabited as never before in the human history of the place – reminds us just how invented, just how constructed, the American wilderness really is.” (Cronon 10) This is one example of the ways that the wilderness is a construction of colonizers and promotes the idea of American exceptionalism, believing the “proper” American to be the above everyone else. The Native Americans who once inhabited the United States fully and completely were reduced to selected portions of the land, only after the colonizers drove them out of their land by force. From the colonizers point of view, the uninhabited land was occupied by Native Americans, yet they were counted less than humans. However, they were able to understand and coexist the earth, land, and animals, something that the colonizers and even modern Americans will never understand.

              Throughout the centuries, colonizers grew into other difficulties such as tourism and resource extraction. In Leopold’s day, hunting for sport was a popular pastime yet that is very different than resource extraction. Resource extraction regards to pulling natural materials in excess such as natural gas and animals, such as killing whales for blubber. When America became industrialized extracting resources to the grand scale and to the point where it began damaging the earth and numbing the general public to the issues at large. By extracting natural resources and slowly diminishing the earth’s resources without preserving them and giving the public what they ask for which is an area to distance themselves from their daily lives. Hence nature and tourism mixed and became an industry in itself. While preservation in National Parks is important and helps people become self-aware of preserving nature and being able to learn how to coexist with nature, while enjoying it. Unfortunately, National Parks and State parks have emphasized that some nature is assumed to be greater and more important, and other places do not have the importance of being conserved. However, there is a cause and need to preserve one’s backyard and local park, just as much as a National Park.

              Wilderness is thought as one definition, thus neglected by many because if nature is to be conquered, to be contained, and to be controlled than there is no reason for it to be protected or saved. While the tunnel vision mindset has stood there for centuries, activists and progressives became aware of the current crisis and took steps to evolve the situation for the better. While there are conservation efforts in place, this is not the end, and should not stop the efforts in place. Throughout these past few weeks, learning about wilderness has changed my overall perspective on the topic. While I knew the importance of preserving nature and being active in the efforts, the knowledge I have gained about Wilderness and the long history of this seemingly simple term. There is a greater depth about the importance of nature and its relation to Wilderness, and place.

 

 

Work Cited

William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in
Nature, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995, 69-90

Leopold, Aldo Reprinted from A Sand County Almanac, published by Oxford University Press, 1949.