I feel very fortunate to have grown up in a community where great effort was taken to balance the natural aspects with the needs of the surrounding city. For example, Nike built their headquarters in the Pacific Northwest by relocating trees, not cutting them down. For Arizona, it would mean saving all the cactus to build, not bulldozing them.
Growing up, almost every weekend included a day trip to a river, forest, beach or mountain and summers always included camping for several days. The author of "The Trouble with Wilderness" may have considered me a part of the group that idealizes nature. However, I disagree that visiting the "wild" encourages irresponsible environmental behavior because I find quite the opposite. When I find myself surrounded by nature, I feel more connected, more inspired to make sure these places are spared development for human use. I leave a campsite cleaner than when I got there, and try my best not to change the wild areas that I visit.
The author also implied that anyone who "works the land for a living" could never really enjoy nature, and I disagree. It can be so very humbling to stand at the top of a mountain, or be swallowed by standing in the mountain's shadow, any person could appreciate the feeling. Whether people choose to explore is their decision, though, there is a difference between a picture and being present.
I'm always conflicted about those people who are environmentally irresponsible. The kind of people who think its okay to trash a campsite rather than leave it cleaner than they found it. On the one hand they are getting exposure to nature, which I do think is healthy and very much needed in our society. On the other hand did they really just hide their all their garbage under a bush in their campsite? Grrr...Who does that?
ReplyDeleteThere is a real problem of places getting loved to death. But I bet that's always going to be a problem for any popular place. Glad to know you are part of the solution.
I think the irresponsible behavior that Cronin was speaking of wasn’t necessarily in regards to behavior in wild spaces. A concept of wilderness presupposes a separation between man and nature. This separation is what Cronin felt was irresponsible or in turn leads to irresponsible behavior. If I think that the town I live in is separate from that wild place I visited last weekend I won’t treat the places the same and this is inherently irresponsible. Just because your backyard or the park up the street doesn’t inspire the same sense of grandeur as Yosemite, doesn’t mean we should be any less invested in maintain and treating these places with equal amounts of respect.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, I think Cronin’s characterization of those who work the land serves more as a vehicle for the development of his argument than as an actual criticism. Cronin argues that our perception of natural and wilderness as this isolated, untainted, untamable place was entirely a conception of the upper class that had never experienced what living in such spaces meant. People that worked the land for a living, the frontier settlers, knew how cruel and dangerous the undeveloped world could be and would, in Cronin’s view, never idolize such a place.
I agree with your opinion that people are in duty bound to protect nature and leave the places clean.
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