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.