modern wilderness ideas
Changing American concept of wilderness--the focus now is on ideas

where have you visited the wilderness?

• boy scout camping Pine Mountain area
  
• Yellowstone, hiking
• Ceasars head, Paris Mountain, state park
• large private wild land in Pennsylvania
• Grand Canyon
• waterfalls in North Carolina, whitewater fall, etc.
• Mount Etna, Sicily
• these are mostly beautiful natural places, places we go to enjoy nature
  

What if we want to say that within a national park or national forest we want to set aside some land as wilderness. How would we define wilderness for that purpose?

• not managed by humans
• preserve it in some earlier state
• no human structures
• limit access so that you don't have so many people that they impact the environment
• no roads, not even dirt fire roads
  

What is wilderness?  For the purposes of this book we need to be careful about what exactly do we mean by wilderness.

• absence of civilization
  
• an unsettled area where there aren't towns
  
• an uninhabited area
• a forest
• somewhere where your surroundings are not designed by humans
• where nature hasn't been disturbed by human beings---
• a place with no roads (not even logging roads)--definition of wilderness used by the federal government
  
• wilderness is a place where you don't see evidence of human beings
• if trails are built is it no longer a wilderness?

http://www.triplejranch.com/faq_wpt.htm

what would disqualify an area as wilderness?

• electricity
• accessibility to a hospital
• campgrounds with restroom facilities?
• roads?
• cell phone service
• the trees were logged 75 years ago?
• you see other people
• you see no traces that people have ever been there
• an airplane overhead?

how wild do you want your wilderness to be
Consider a spectrum between wilderness and civilization:

1. city--in many ways we are in a human-created world
   
2. suburb
3. farms--nature under human control
   
4. park designed by landscape architect
5. natural land managed for human use (including harvesting timber), such as the Clemson Experimental Forest
   
6. wild land intended for human visits (eg. trails)
7. wilderness where you don't see any evidence of humans
8. wilderness areas where human beings aren't allowed
   

Americans value wilderness differently from Europeans

history of our ideas about wilderness:

• In the beginning of Western society, first people drew a line between domesticated and wild plants and animals
• difference between what is controlled by humans and what is out of human control
  
• humans began to want to be masters or owners of nature, to control it
  
• wilderness was unknown, disordered, dangerous, uncontrolled
  
• nature was no longer something we were a part of but an object for exploitation--wilderness as something to be conquered
• that was certainly the view of early European settlers in North America
  
• we have a very different idea today in North America--we want to preserve some wilderness, not conquer it all
  
• how did this change?
  
• how did we come to see wilderness as to be admired (19th century idea) and preserved
  

how did we get from there to current appreciation for wilderness?

We have now gotten to the idea that wilderness should be preserved.  Why?
why might we value wilderness today?  there are several possibilities

• to encourage curiosity and the study of science
  
• we need forests to provide us with oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide, other ecological benefits
• to give people a different experience--why is that an important experience?
• beauty--to feel immersed in beauty, to make it more real and tangible
• to make us better human beings
• to appreciate nature
• to bond with it
• to build character and self-reliance
• to bring people closer to God
• provides a sense of adventure
• relaxing
  
• a place to escape from the dangers and pressures of civilization
  
• it is disappearing
• we couldn't restore it if it disappeared
  
• special to America--part of American identity
  
• want to be able to go places where we don't see evidence of human beings
• preserve natural resources for future use--timber, hunting, fishing, water supply
  
• to preserve natural areas for future research
  

how might you divide up these reasons:

• preserve wilderness from a moral standpoint
• wilderness has a right to exist not for human use but for its own sake
• experiencing wilderness makes us better human beings or brings us closer to God
  
• preserve wilderness as a tourist attraction (including hunting)
  
• preserve wilderness for practical use (logging, grazing, preserving water supply)
  

today wilderness means uncultivated and undeveloped land (land without humans)
but is also used for anywhere that people get lost and confused


33,000 people live in the 368 square miles of Dartmoor National Park in England and over 90% of the land in the park is used for farming.  Yet the high moor is described as the last true wildernesses left in England today.

• by its history, the word wilderness means the place of wild beasts
• southern European languages don't even have words for wilderness
• the word was not significantly used in English until it was used in translating the Bible

the wilderness in which Moses and his followers wandered for 40 years

change from wilderness as something to be conquered to wilderness as something to be preserved?