Category Archives: Week 9: Defining “The Wilderness” and “The Environment”

Humans Shape the Environment

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In The Emergence of Environmental Humanities, Emmett and Nye cite a line from an Australian coastal manager. They said “We do not manage the environment, only the behaviors that affect its structure and processes”. This shows one of the key ideas of the environmental humanities which is that we must see that environmental problems are at their core, human problems. This quote gets rid of the idea that people can control nature as if it is something that’s separate and it reframes the idea that if we want to see change it must be in OUR values, habits and institutions. 

The word “manage” usually means control or authority. By denying that we can “manage the environment” it means that we must shift our responsibilities from controlling ecosystems to understanding ourselves. We as humans are able to control our behaviors, consumption and culture that can shape our environmental outcomes. Emmet and Nye talked about the failed eco city near Shanghai and the Huangbaiyu village project. Both of these were technological solutions that collapsed because the planners ignored the local community. This shows us that environmental sustainability cannot be planned from “the top down” instead it requires cultural participation. 

The phrasing “structure and processes” is also super important. It brings out the scientific language but also links it to human behavior. It explains that the environmental humanities mission is to bridge scientific understanding with cultural interpretation. The problem is not lack of data or information about something such as biodiversity but it’s a failure to act on that knowledge. By emphasizing behavior, the quote brings more of an emotional and ethical response not just a technical one.    

This also shows that there can be limits when it comes to technological “fixes”. For example, Emmett and Nye say that we can design and build solar houses and energy efficient cities but convincing the public to build it or live in it is not a scientific issue, but a cultural issue. This is when the humanities comes in, it helps us understand desires and meaning. To “manage” behavior means we must engage in values and identities that make sustainable choses feel possible and worth something.  

This quote made me think about what environmental responsibility really means. It forced me to stop looking at nature as an object and start recognizing the connection between human actions and environmental change.​​ The environmental humanities emerge as a practical approach that’s grounded in empathy, communication and a collective self awareness.

The Intertwining of Humans and the “Wilderness”

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While humans often think of the wilderness as an entity separate from humans, “The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” by William Cronon highlights the notion that we can find nature in our own backyards and in remote areas, intertwining humans and nature. This changes the way humans think about nature since it erases the boundary between humans and the environment around them, because the “wilderness” can exist in “civilized” environments.

Humans often depict the wilderness as this grand fantasy where “[t]he torrents of mist shoot out from the base of a great waterfall in the depths of a Sierra canyon, the tiny droplets cooling your face as you listen to the roar of the water and gaze up toward the sky through a rainbow that hovers just out of reach” (Cronon 8). The wilderness becomes this awe-inspiring entity that dazzles and wows us with its grandness. It is on a massive scale where humans feel insignificant to the “roar of the water” and the “rainbow that hovers just out of reach.” In turn, humans feel detached from this form of nature because it is outside our scope of what we deem as civilized because people view it as being formulated by “nature” itself. There was seemingly no human involvement in creating the “mist [shooting] out from the base of a great waterfall,” forcing nature into the category of “other” since it evolved without any help from humans.

However, Cronon dispels this idea when explaining that “[t]he tree in the garden is in reality no less other, no less worthy of our wonder and respect, than the tree in an ancient forest that has never known an ax or a saw” (24). Wilderness becomes something that is part of everyday life as we breathe in the scent of pine trees wafting through the air or sit on the grass in the backyard on a hot summer day. Every tree and blade of grass brings us into the realm of wilderness without having to venture to far off places to experience it since they both arose from the same Earth and conditions. As a result, “the tree in the garden” becomes a symbol for the untamed environments around the world and brings the wild right to our backyard. We essentially live in the wild if we view the tree in our backyard as having a connection with a tree found in a remote area. Here, the separation between nature and humans is blurred when we realize that the wilderness is all around us. Simply because it sprouted in a civilized environment doesn’t mean that it makes the tree, plant, animal, etc. any less part of nature.

By intertwining humans and nature, it shifts the way we think about the environment since it becomes something that is part of our daily lives and all around us. Rather than thinking of wilderness as a foreign place, we can appreciate the wilderness outside our windows. It is then that we can truly create a change by noticing that the “other” (aka nature) is actually part of our lives. This allows us to see the responsibility we have to take care of the environment because it is essentially on our doorstep. The fate of the “other” then becomes the fate of humans, for whatever happens to the environment will then impact the way humans live on the Earth.

William Cronon on the Commodification of Nature

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In the essay “The Trouble with the Wilderness” William Cronon depicts the ways in which the wilderness, despite it being “othered,” is often “civilized” by humans’ ways of interacting and discussing the environment. Because of this people need to think more critically about how we treat nature as a commodity and pastime rather than something bigger and separate from humankind. One excerpt that notably stuck out to me was Cronons depiction of different ways humans are spectators of the environment, describing “The moment beside the trail as you sit on a sandstone ledge, your boots damp with the morning dew while you take in the rich smell of the pines […] Remember the feelings of such moments, […] that you were in the presence of something irreducibly nonhuman, something profoundly Other than yourself. Wilderness is made of that too” (8). Cronon immerses the reader in all these different settings with “rich smells of the pines” and “boots damp with the morning dew” romanticizing it in the same way that humans romanticize the environment. Wilderness, here, is personified and contrastingly “something profoundly Other”—giving nature its own identity and simultaneously showing the limits of human understanding of it. This contrast depicts the human-self and the “incredibly nonhuman” aspects of nature as separate yet connected. Cronon interconnects aspects of humankind and nature, to show that “wilderness is made of that too.” Wilderness is not simply made up of the spectacles that people see such as rocks, trees, and animals. Instead, the trees and animals are a manifestation of “otherness,” it is something that is beyond human creation, understanding, or control. 

Though, Cronon later explains that this “otherness” has become commodified by humans as something of entertainment. He clarifies that “As more and more tourists sought out the wilderness as a spectacle to be looked at and enjoyed for its great beauty, the sublime in effect became domesticated” (12). There is a sense of irony to his explanation—that the wilderness, which is thought to be untameable, can be domesticated through human tourism and spectacle. Even the use of the word “tourist” implicates human kind as guests on foreign land. People who have come to romanticize a place and “culture” that they may not fully understand. In this case, Nature becomes commercialized, making something “sublime” controlled. 

Cronon’s essay is a critique on societies tendency to consume nature as a form of entertainment rather than something greater than themselves. That in order to appreciate nature for more than simply being a means of profit, people must think critically on their past views of nature. Past views, due to a history of colonization and capitalism, deem nature and wilderness as a form of property. Instead, there has to be a reframing of wilderness as autonomous with honor.