Prompt: How has reading about the history of our concept of ‘wilderness’ altered (or not) your sense of what it is and how we should think about it?
When I hear the word “wilderness”, images of densely populated forests full of animals, or maybe the vastness of the Antarctic, the forbidding landscapes of this planet come to my head. Areas that, if one visited, they might be the first one making a path through that area. Somewhere that I’d love to hike through, but never live because I’m a bit too attached to my warm bed and my daily dose of SportsCenter, but I digress.
According to Cronon, my idea of the word “wilderness” is a myth created by the culture I was raised in. i.e. Movies, television, books etc. where wilderness is that dark expanse where the bad guys’ fortress is in the deepest darkest part of and lions, tigers, and bears are lurking. Oh my. But Cronon’s idea that the only way for wilderness to exist is for us not to is a depressing one. For it means that what is left of this true wilderness won’t exist much longer. We as human beings are selfish and adventurous by nature; these two aspects make it impossible for us to leave the untouched alone. We will either want to explore it or use it. Not to mention that most of the population wouldn’t sacrifice their well-being for the idea of a wild, untouched land anyways. Look at what we did by damming the Tuolumne River in Hetch Hetchy valley; we destroyed a landscape that was supposedly as beautiful as Yosemite to promote the growth of San Francisco.
The more I thought about Cronon’s idea of “wilderness” the more I realized that even the taming of the wilderness that was America by the colonists was also a myth. What was so wild about an area that already had hundreds of thousands of people there? The Native Americans had been there for thousands of years making the land less “wild”. Even though they weren’t the Anglo-Saxon, Christian people that we considered “civilized”, they were still disrupting the virginity of the land long before any colonists did.
It seems that if we want to keep wilderness truly wild instead of the facade that is our hiking trails and campsites, we need to respect it and admire it from afar instead sticking our nose into every corner of this planet. As much as some people won’t admit it, we need wilderness as Cronon describes it, both to preserve our ecosystem and for our imaginations. We are part of this planet too and need to act accordingly. Also, if there were no deep, dark, scary places left in this world, where is Disney going to base their next villain? Let's at least try to keep what's left of wilderness wild.
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Cronon, William. "The Trouble with Wilderness." Saving Place. Ed. Sidney Dobrin. New York: McGraw Hill, 2005. 11-30. Print.
i really like this post it covers all that i think. Its a tough idea that we need to not influence the 'wilderness' as directly as we have been, like cutting it down our parading al around it. WHich may not seem like a hard idea but the horrible thing is think of trying to tell a president or leader of a country not to build that planet or building and tell that avid hiker he can't go there because if he can then everyone can. It seems so simple and it is, the idea how ever but the actions as we see are proving to be difficult.
ReplyDeleteNice post. The idea that the Native Americans were making the land into something other than wilderness long before us isn't really mentioned often. Cronon brings it up obviously, but I think he was using that to make the point that later settlers killed or moved them from land we currently view as wilderness.
ReplyDeleteBut you make a good point that even before our great great great great grandfathers slaughtered people, the Native Americans had already basically eliminated the mythical wilderness. I mean they were using that land and everything around to survive, so it's impossible to equate their use with what current society does. But it's still interesting to think that people in general tend to eliminate the wilderness around them with their actions, regardless of the reasons behind those actionas. I also wonder if we really could admire parts of wilderness from afar for very long or if we would just end up noticing a new way to use it for our own wants.
You definitely have a good way of expressing your understanding of Cronon and his essay. Humans are a different kind of animal, we are selfish to the core compared to any other animal. We won't ever stop either which is why I think Cronon made the suicide reference. He knows we have already gone too far. We have taken that bible quote telling us to rape and pillage the land and never looked back.
ReplyDeleteYou also mentioned how humans wouldn't sacrifice their well-being for the earth, and I agree and think the worst part is that most of the human race wouldn't give up their lifestyles if it meant helping preserve earth for future generations.
Toward your ending you said we should act accordingly because we are a part of this planet. Isn't it funny that every other species just naturally acts accordingly, but we have to make a conscious effort to?