Tag Archives: wilderness

A Shift in Perspetive: Why did the word “Wilderness” change?

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The Trouble With Wilderness, as a whole, prompts us, as readers, to reconsider our perspective on what we understand to be “wild” or “the wilderness.” What really intrigued me was how the language we have used to describe a place without civilization has changed so dramatically.

“As late as the eighteenth century, the most common usage of the word “wilderness” in the English language referred to landscapes that generally carried adjectives
far different from the ones they attractoday. To be a wilderness then was to be “deserted,” “savage,” “desolate,” “barren”-in short, a “waste,” the word’s nearest synonym. Its connotations were anything but positive, and the emotion one was most
likely to feel in its presence was “bewilderment” or terror.'” (Cronon 8)

Land without human touch was once seen as no more than land waiting to be demarcated and domesticated. This was the case even when that “barren” or “savage” land was populated by its native peoples. If in the eighteenth century, we were so uninterested in going to these supposedly terrifying and pointless places, why are we continually more interested in going to them and away from our modern world? If in the past they felt more comfortable in towns or villages, and if they believed the land was just waiting to be built upon, then what happened? Perhaps we aren’t a very communal species anymore. The bustling towns and communities we made could have made us claustrophobic. Maybe we had to change the wording around “wildereness” to have a justifiable escape. Now, instead of feeling “terror” in the woods, we feel it at our office desks, drinking $7 coffees and reading spine-chilling news headlines. Nature and wilderness are now seen as tranquil and solitary, and FREE. Although my dad always used to say “nothing’s free”, he may have a point. I personally have been given the means and privilege to travel to places I really do consider “wild,” but sometimes just getting to the “wild” is expensive.

Under the Wilderness Act of 1964, “true wilderness” is defined as an area “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Although we have changed our vocabulary around the “great”, “vast”, and “beautiful”, wilderness. We still know one thing to be certain, and it is that we cannot remain. The very thing about nature is that it is without us. We have built that construct, and we cannot escape it. We have, in many ways, evolved. We can no longer survive in what is true wilderness. Many men have attempted it for sure, my favorite is Christopher McCandless, whose story I read in Into the Wild, he truly did it right, seeking out the original “deserted, savage, (and) desolate” wilderness.

Week 9: The Wilderness v The Wildness

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In “The trouble with Wilderness, or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” by William Cronon is a deep investigation into our relationship with nature and the way we regard it as either wilderness, or wildness. On the one hand, regarding nature as a wilderness removes humanity from the equation, and isolates us from the natural world, one in which we are disconnected from and which only extravagant wealth can be equipped to reconnect with. Picture: nature retreats on islands of paradise, or even the amount of money and preparation required to hike Mt. Everest. For some, even a visit to a local park is out of bounds. Nature is thus relegated to a past time for the wealthy, and a source to be reaped of it’s natural resources

One part that summed it all up to me in Cronon’s exposition was that this recomposed view on wilderness versus wildness, “means looking at the part of nature we intend to turn toward our own ends and asking whether we can use it again and again and again-sustainably-without its being diminished in the process. It means never imagining that we can flee into a mythical wilderness to escape history and the obligation to take responsibility for our own actions that history inescapably entails (p.25)” The lack of connection makes it even easier to use nature as a thing, rather than a body that we influence and are influenced from. However, considering nature as a wildness connects it with our everyday life and surroundings, as a wildness can be recognized even in the explosion of weeds in our front yard. In this way nature is present, nature shows us it’s refusal to yield, and that it has autonomy. This, Cronon reminds us, is important in rebuilding our relationship with nature: respecting it’s autonomy.

Week 9

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In his essay “The Trouble with Wilderness”, William Cronon highlights the irony of the modern idea of wilderness. Something I thought was exciting was his take on how the wilderness is stolen land, something that was taken and demestocated by modern government and cultures. Cronon writes, “Once set aside within the fixed and carefully policed boundaries of the modern bureaucratic state, the wilderness lost its savage image and became safe: a place more of reverie than of revulsion or fear” (Cronon 15).

I thought this was very interesting because of his use of the word “bureaucratic”; sometimes I forget this word exists, and when I remember it, it always hits me like a truck. It shows how the government has turned the wilderness into something more manageable and less wild. The idea that the wilderness has been taken and turned into something to either profit from or control is wild to me. (see what I did there XD ) The irony of this idea is that the wilderness has become something worth putting time into because of the control the world has over it. No control = not worth the time.

Cronon’s saying “carefully policed boundaries” shows the irony of controlling the wild. He argues that we have turned the wild into something controllable, a mirror of our ideals as humans, rather than something of true wildness. By saying that the wilderness “lost its savage image,” it shows just that. The wild is not the wild anymore, but merely a copy of the wild through the eyes of humans rather than nature. This quote highlights Cronon’s idea that to gather true ecological ethics, we must remove the idea of separate human and natural worlds. The wilderness is not supposed to be something that is controlled, but something that we as humans live with and in. Something we inhabit and enter every day, and not just when we feel like it.

Song of the Week: The Shadow of Love by Stomu Yamash’ta (this one is a bit different than the rest, but I still heard it and instantly thought “Mermaidcore”, it’s very peaceful and it gives more “the peace of the ocean” than anything else!)

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.