The Concept of Wildness and Wilderness in American Nature Writing
Prior researches have revealed that American used to view wilderness as a place where natural and humans are separated and where civilized and wild are set apart. This is mainly witnessed through the work of such native American writer, modern nature writers, the Transcendentalists as well as American nature writers of the romantic period like Henry David Thoreau, (Walden), John Muirs, (the mountains of California), Aldo Leopolds, (sand county Almanac), Henry Bestons, (outermost house), Annie Dillards, (pilgrim at Tinker Creeks), Edward Abbeys, (Desert Solitaire), Sally Carrighars, (One day at Teton Marsh), Sigurd Olsons, (reflections from the North Country) and Rachel Carsons, (a sense of wonder).
On the other hand, Unlike the traditional perception of wilderness as an object to conquer, other cultures have demonstrated a different perception frontier spirit where they regard important to have sustainable resources for sustainable communities (Brown 32). Despite the fact that different cultures settled the west, the research will reveal that different cultures response to wilderness was unique. The paper will explore the cultural construction of wilderness by examining historical development and diverse human perception of wilderness and especially the influence with the American Native writers.
Introduction
Native American cultures perception of wilderness traditionally and presently.
Wilderness also called wildland have been defined differently which culminates to mean the natural environment which is not yet significantly modified by human processes and undertaking, hence free of human civilization. Robert (77) notes that as a response to both political and social aspects, perception of wilderness by human have changed throughout the history. Wilderness is presently viewed as something to be cherished, protected and preserved which was not always the case sometimes back.
According to Robert (66) at earlier times, wilderness was considered an evil or something that could have been conquered and destroyed. Based on this therefore, wilderness were likely to be found in such areas like national parks, conservation preserves, national forests and other undeveloped areas. These areas were highly considered for biodiversity, recreation, ecological studies, moral, cultural and spiritual reasons as well as conservation. On the other hand, nature writers have considered wilderness areas as vital for human creativity and spirit. These areas are greatly regarded for the preservation of wild flora and fauna as well as historic genetic traits (Social studies lesson 6).
Many American writers like John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, Sigurd Olson, Rachel Carson and Aldo Leopold, David Brower and Edward Abbey among others have their writing communicating to inform as well as to influence and provide a sense of feeling about nature. Their writing has particularly affected the vision of many people on natural world which greatly helped in preservation, love and conservation of wilderness (Social studies lesson 6).
Changing Perceptions of Nature and the Rise of the Sublime
Idealizing Wilderness Wilderness and Romantic Movement
The changing perception of wilderness was greatly experienced between 1850s and 1860s in the writings of Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Cronon and Thomas Cole of the early American Renaissance that was partly influenced by British Romanticism. By this time with Americans, nature was a subject of their letters and art although the perception of wilderness was by then experiencing a shift to reflect a new dimension of concern of wilderness rather than viewing it as an obstacle for the establishment of civilization. Thoreau (12) explains that wilderness was more primeval in America than anywhere else in Europe. Cronon (21) explains regarding to Romantics view of wilderness, the Romantics believed that nature was the inherent possessor of abstract qualities such as truth, beauty, independence and democracy, that in the natural world, people could reclaim or at least approximate the lost innocence of their origin-both national and individual.
Regarding the view of Americans on wilderness, Thoreau (9) observes that the image of the American as a garden could apply to the Romantic perspective of nature, but requires stripping from the landscape the gridwork of civilization. Emerson (71) popularized this and disregarded the European tradition by asserting that No longer bound by classical notions of the art and literature in Europe, many American artists and authors disregarded European traditions and began to explore the natural world of America for its possibilities of new subject matter. To integrate all these Thoreau explains between the wilderness of the west and the prosperity of the east, Americans felt that they had at last combined within their culture the very bet of nature and civilization. Nonetheless, the contrasting views of nature are troubling, on one hand the depletion and exploitation of the wilderness helped build cities and make millionaires whereas on the other hand, wilderness was considered the font of national traits and the foundation of a national identity. These finding and perception of wilderness by nature writers of the Romantic times is expounded here in.
In the 18th century, with civilization and humans perceiving themselves as masters of the earth dominated and exploited wilderness (Charles 14). However, the influence of the Romantic movement of 18th century which was an intellectual, literary and artistic movement in Western Europe resulted to a shift in the way people perceived wilderness. Romanticism idealized emotion, aesthetic and imagination but greatly criticized scientific rationalization. The realization and perception of natural resources as finite by these nature writers of this time greatly prompted a shift to the perception of nature as divine inspiration as opposed to their earlier perception of nature as raw material. To this end, in order for nature writers to accumulate enough influence of their perception of wilderness, they associated wilderness with diverse core values of the culture that idealized and created wilderness (Nash 44).
Wilderness and Religious connotation during Romantic Movement
During the Romantic movement of the 18th century, many nature writers influenced the perception of wilderness as a place where Gods hand work was displayed through untouched mountains trees and lakes in the wilderness thus gaining a religious connotation. They rationalized the idea that if at all Satan could be found in forest, so was Christ. More still, during the Romantic Movement there was the development of the idea of the sublime which heightened the shift in the perception of wilderness.
Thoreau an author and nature writer popularized the idea of sublime and the manner of finding it in nature. He described sublimity as when people without in being in such circumstance in actual sense, they develop an idea of danger and pain (Brown, 8). With this idea of sublime it meant that wild being barren, harsh and satanic landscape gained aesthetic value which were less grave, cruel and threatening and where one could feel the presence of God when surrounded by such natural wonders like canyons, mountains and waterfalls among other natural features. As a result therefore, Romantic Movement and nature writers of 18th century helped change the perception of wilderness from wasteland to perceiving it as temple which then made wilderness to be something that could be valued appreciated and protected.
Therefore the religious connotation of wilderness together with chaos and crowding situations with the urbanites prompted many to embrace wilderness as a perfect destination. They developed the perception that with the pressures of industrial capitalism, rapid technological revolutionization and artifice, the untouched wilderness could offer a tangible remedy as the source of moral authority and meaning (Stutter 36). It was as a result of this that by mid 19th century, the idea of sublimity with wilderness was revisited to mean sentimentality and comfort. People in North America for example highly regarded wilderness as a place that could accommodate such recreation activities like camping, youth camps, remote lodges, canoeing and hiking which ultimately made wilderness popular for such outdoor pursuits.
Following heightened and pleasurable perception of wilderness as sacred, together with much concern about afflictions and health especially the feeling with many urbanites that the healthy climate in the wilderness could cure many illnesses, made wilderness appealing. Nature therefore became an appealing place that could offer relaxation, good health, moral regeneration and recreation, a situation that helped idealization of wilderness making many urbanites of that time to venture wildlands to escape from the modern and industrial chaos of urban places.
Stutter (7) provides that many nature writers of Romantic Movement together with the recreation movement of the mid-to-late nineteenth century, made wilderness to loose much of its repulsiveness. Stutter (9) explains that it is not that wilderness itself changed rather it experienced a different context where it was characterized with coveted qualities of aesthetic and natural meaning that immediately when people realized the importance attached to wilderness, they embraced, appreciated and attached great importance in protecting the same (Arctic Institute of North America).
Nature and American consciousness Frontier Thesis
Contrasting views of wilderness in frontier American
Once an American by the name Fredrick Jackson announced the American character did not spring full-brown from the Mayflower, rather from the forests and gained new strength each time it touched a frontier. During this time, Americans contested of wilderness to contain (1) temptations and savagery which normally threatened the authority of the community and (2) a new garden where cultivation by the European settlers could have flourished. Americans were therefore faced with these contrasting views of the wilderness which eventually worked to bring forth establishment of civilization which converted wilderness from a young nation to an ultimate source of national identity and pride for the Americans (Arctic Institute of North America).
Contrasting views of wilderness in frontier Europeans
Nash (26) in his work The Cultural Significance of the American Wilderness, Europeans regarded wilderness as a physical void and spiritual with unusual topography, with bizarre animals and strange indigenous inhabitants which ought to be conquered and civilized all in the name progress and Christianity. With the Europeans wilderness was a place where the consensus and the community could be put in peril for without much involvement of European civilization religion or even law.
With Englanders wilderness was viewed as a place where the devil could seduce and distort even the holiest in the community. For Virginia and Pennsylvania, wilderness constituted of a place or garden that if tamed and cleared could become an inhabitant of human community with supply of raw material and as such they perceived nature as to be utilized rather than being feared. In general therefore, with European cultures, wilderness was considered a savage to be destroyed in order to bloom it (Guha 63).
Wilderness and independence in America (Wilderness Bill of Rights)
Roderick Nash
Many nature writers in America attach great importance the concept of wilderness in their journey to America independence (Arctic Institute of North America). With Roderick Nash who is considered a great influential if the concept of wilderness in American life, politics, literature and thought. Nash (18) for example explains of the subsequential American journey from the hatred and fear of wilderness to recognizing the same as a unique underdeveloped land to the believe that wilderness have such redemptive and spiritual value to the current ambivalence consideration of wilderness as an open space fundamental in enhancing the countrys growth and development (Nash 24).
John Muir and Technological Invention
Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike. John Muir (36).
John Muir who was a nature writer and a lover of technological inventions, worked and advocated for the preservation of natural wilderness. Muir held that wilderness hold and accommodates intrinsic values which are worth protecting and preserving. He once said when a person spends time in a pristine wilderness environment his or her mind and body experiences a renewal that cannot be found in any other way hence the need to preserve it both for present as well as for future generations.
Fredrick Jackson once stated that the American wilderness is the ultimate source of American Liberal and democratic traditions, without it, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness recede further from the grasp of man.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson (15) wrote in the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate that in the streets or villages..in the woods we return to reason and faith.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (17) integrated the different perception of wilderness from the well-publicized and intensive scientific investigation of the continental hinterlands, the rapprochement between nature and religion as well as the imaginative connection between wilderness and americanness, synthesized all and urged people to move away from the old ideas of wilderness by the Europeans to rejuvenate their minds in embracing wilderness as a natural world endowed with abundance
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau (84) said in a lecture in wilderness is the preservation of the World. Considered as the first American supporter of the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin, Thoreau in his nature writing advocated for the conservation and preservation of wilderness as public land, natural resources on private land as well as advocacy of canoeing and recreational hiking. In his writing, Thoreau sought the pastoral realm which integrated both culture and nature meaning that he neither embraced wilderness fully nor did he rejected civilization.
Aldo Leopolds
Interconnectedness existing between different cultures and the environment,
Different cultures have diverse perceptions of wilderness. On the other hand, different cultures value wilderness in similar ways as well as in different ways. However, all, cultures derive from the continuing supply of wilderness. Traditionally, in European cultures wilderness was considered a place of mystery and darkness. Based on this therefore, to indigenous cultures globally, wilderness was valued for its ability to provide for everything that was needed in the maintenance and development of a prosperous existence (Eric 106).
These and many other American nature writers sensed and discovered that their country was different in terms of wilderness context. Therefore they seized on the distinction of wilderness and instead added to it romantic and deistic assumptions about the value attached to wild country. This nationalist therefore discovered that as opposed to being a liability, wilderness was an asset for the Americans for moral, cultural resource as well as a foundation for national esteem.
Religious Dimensions
Wilderness as a touchstone concept is believed to have entered America with the Puritans in 1620s. This result had a great significance to the American culture where it had retained a religious ring even after moving away from the dogma of Christianity. For Puritan, Wilderness was more of the spiritual state they found themselves in as opposed to the mere physical environments. They perceived and related wilderness with their state as Christian saints in the fallen land. They considered wilderness as the totality of the adversities that beset them as a Christian community and as such could include even the highly urbanized European milieu from which they came, hence they regarded protestant emigration to Massachusetts Bay colony as a movement out of Wilderness, Barry (1999 42).
As a result, with many Christians like the Puritan, wilderness was viewed as a place of renewal (the north American environment represented an austere and uncorrupted landscape where a saintlier community could flower, materially overabundant, dissolution and testing (spiritually deadening), in this case the geological formation of fauna and flora among others being the actual contents of wilderness were contrasted with the view of wilderness as a complex community dynamics and scriptural precedents. Based on this therefore, it was irrational especially with the non-Puritan in New England to understand the abundant and populated regions with connotations of solitude and bareness as wilderness (Eric 112).
How was Wilderness Gendered
Contrast of Adam and Eve
In reference to Barry (108) western patriarchal culture greatly regard divorcing culture from nature whereby they attributes of males with culture and that of females were associated with nature, this as a result constituted gender dualism which derives its roots in Judeo-Christianity. Merchant (133) popularizes this by asserting that this conception of nature was greatly influenced by the gendering of the story of Eden where the fall of Eden was caused by a woman Eve who through disobeying God made Adam an innocent bystander to feel the consequences. He notes that as a result, Adam became very resourceful and invested infrastructures paramount if restoring the lost garden whereas Eve was to be tamed into submission. Hence in this culture of Adam and Eve, natures as well as women are portrayed negatively with men standing out as survivors and saviors. Integrating this to the concept of wilderness, King James Version utilizes the terms mother land and Virgin land to describe nature. Merchant (112) in reference to the Edenic Recovery Story notes three instances where gendered nature is portrayed (1) Original Eve which portrays and depicts nature as pure, virgin, pristine and light meaning that even though the land is barren, still possesses the potential for development. (2) Fallen Eve which depicts a chaotic and disorderly nature. In this case, wilderness is considered desert and wasteland which would need improvement to make it productive. (3) Mother Eve at this level nature is portrayed as a rejuvenated and improved garden ready to provide nurturance to bear fruits.
In contrast, (1) Original Adam is used to portray God as the creator (2) Fallen Adam is here considered as an agent of transformation whereas (3) Father Adam depicts the image of God in patriarch. To this end therefore, Merchant (137) exclaims that nature depicts male as a hero needed to cultivate and transform the land while a woman on the other hand need to be controlled. Barry (110) therefore provides that diverse cultures employ the concept of wilderness to study gender relation and their construction.
Wilderness in European Cultures
Historically, wilderness was identified with such elements that carried negative connotations as barren, savage, chaotic and desolate. With European cultures, for example, wilderness was perceived as ungodly, dangerous as well as a place where one could have risked getting lost. As a result many European fairytales and folktales many a times portrayed forests as evil places in which a hero could have been abducted and tempted. They regarded wilderness as a place for Satan and where satanic witches and rituals were convened, hence viewing wilderness as threatening and unsafe a perception that was brought forth in the new world (Arctic Institute of North America).
In reference to Barry (1999, 37) when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, having defied God, they were banished from the land a paradise where they used to obtain all their needs. It followed therefore that Adam and his descendants suffered for food and survival in the then unforgiving wilderness. Hence there resulted a contrast whereby Eden which was predictable and safe for survival was later perceived as wilderness unpredictable and dangerous. This was a negative perception of wilderness as well as a motivator to implement strategies to harness the landscape particularly in the Recovery Narrative in the Bible where humans regained power to control and manage the earth in a process to searching for the lost garden.
Wilderness in the Last Century
In the last century, wilderness received a popular conception as the purest natural part of the world. When this new world was discovered by European explorers, these explorers came upon and exposed Aboriginals to conflicts and diseases which eventually reduced their numbers. The resultant colonization of Australia and North America made European white settlers to occupy lands that initially belonged to Aboriginals. This emanated from the perception of Europeans Aboriginals as wilderness, savageness and character of Wild County. Nash (Xiii) notes that when the European now in the new world became more industrialized and civilized, they moved further and further from wilderness and hence the Aboriginal people.
According to Nash (7) the popular conception of wilderness provided that wilderness should be free of people. With colonization of the land that belonged to the Aboriginal people means that they were removed from these lands with an eventual creation of protected parks as reinvented places with predictable encounters of wilderness within defined parameters. Nash therefore provides that with the removal form parks of the first nations is a clear indication that wilderness was not represented in its original state rather it was constructed to benefit a particular group in expense of others.
From the west, the dominant view of wilderness has shifted from the negative image of Judeo-Christian as a dark home of evil and threats to a positive view of wilderness as the undisturbed nature and especially in North America where the development of land by the immigrants from Europe is almost approaching wilderness while the frontier are pushed further towards the westward.
CONCLUSION
In the modern society, wilderness is continually protected and idealized for the use benefit of mankind. Just like in the nineteenth century, the current experience in wilderness arose from the desire to connect to the natural. At present times wilderness has been utilized and braded as a profit making vehicle with many Television shows capitalizing on the interaction between nature and humans while still appealing for the transition of the old concepts of the conquest of nature. However, following the increased rate of civilization, extensive exploitation of wilderness has resulted to diminished natural landscapes bring forth mass issues related to environment. Contrary to the past where control over and reduction of wilderness was considered an achievement, at current times much focus is on protection of the wilderness which greatly illustrates the extent to which perception of wilderness has evolved over time.
In reference to Wilderness and the American Mind Nash contends that in America, on wilderness ground majority maintained an anthropocentric view which was based on the contention that in order to ameliorate concerns on environment people will be needed to deviate from this view. Various nature writers have therefore helped in sensitizing the nation towards understanding of the broader spectrum of the wilderness. Through their work, they helped to spur a legacy of protecting the resources which has endured and facilitated the formation of various National Systems for wilderness preservation in American as well as in other nations. The heritage of the past is the seed that brings forth the harvest of the future.
Hence in modern times, the concept of wilderness is viewed as a source of diverse attitude as opposed to traditional perception of wilderness as an object to conquer. Other cultures have demonstrated a different perception frontier spirit. The Hispanic culture for example of respecting the wild lands natural processes and connection to the cycles and seasons is viewed as not one of conquering but one of living together with the wildness of the land.
In reference to American History, lesson 7, of late, the idea of wilderness has received increased appreciation and especially in North America where wilderness movement originated and developed to conservation of the same and especially in the establishment of the worlds first national parks, recognition of wilderness and the associated importance of preserving wildland through passing of the Wilderness Act in 1964.
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