Culture and Conflict

Defining wilderness has always been controversial because wilderness is understood and interpreted in different ways. Most definitions reflect the idea that 'wildernesses' are untouched, pristine parts of the 'natural world'.  But the wilderness the concept of is bigger than that, it is also about indigenous people and wild species, and this is rarely reflected in most definitions.

The term wilderness has been used in many different ways; wilderness can mean a place of disorientation and confusion (moral as well as physical); it can mean a place where humans are absent, alien, not at home; or conversely and positively, it can symbolise a kind of sanctuary, a place of refreshment, pure, undefiled, an escape from civilisation.  This mixture of positive/negative evaluations carried by the idea of wilderness is very long standing.

Historical Use of 'Wilderness'

The hugely influential first English translation of the Latin Bible demonstrates this ambiguity. Wilderness meant the uninhabited, arid land, the "great and terrible wilderness" where people wander and where there is great thirst. It could be the place of god's curse. But it could also be a place of purification and communion with god - as when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness and subsequently angels ministered to him.

Popular medieval perceptions of wilderness were primarily negative - the wilderness as that against which humans struggle to live, a place swarming with demons, monsters, trolls, sprites and evil spirits which needing taming, civilising and to be brought in harmony with the Christian divine order. Many of the settlers in the New World took such views with them in the seventeenth and eighteen centuries. They saw the wilderness as needing to be conquered and subdued; it was widely thought that this was what the creator had intended humans to do. Puritan settlers on the East Coast of the US regarded the wilderness as evil, the indigenous people who lived in it as savages, and themselves as the civilised who should overcome the wilderness and make it productive. This frontier tradition of rugged men pushing the frontier of wilderness ever further West in order to inhabit and work the land - forms one important strand of the US wilderness tradition.

The Romantic Movement

But even as these views were growing amongst settlers in the US, other currents were stirring in Europe. Some Enlightenment thinkers began to argue that god as creator was revealed through nature - including wild nature. This lay the foundations for more positive views about wilderness and god. Could wilderness show the beauty and grandeur of god, rather than be home of devils?  Might sin be lodged in human hearts whilst the "wilderness" is an unsullied Eden?

Such ideas were developed in the Romantic Movement in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century. This complex and diverse movement emphasised the importance of mystery, solitude, spiritual awareness and wild nature.  The idea that nature should be viewed as an organism, not a machine; and that there was something "noble" about being a "savage".  Native peoples could be viewed as untainted by the corruption of civilisation rather than as demonic denizens of the wild.

The American Wilderness Writers

It was this more positive assessment of wilderness which led to the creation of the first National Park in 1872 - Yellowstone in the US.  By this time the great American wilderness writers, Emerson, Thoreau and Muir were being widely read.  Emerson's book Nature was published in 1834.  He argued that nature was the human spiritual home, where it was possible for humans to get in touch with what is true about themselves.  For Emerson, the ‘wild' acts as a vehicle for the divine/human relationship.

Much of Emerson's writing, including Nature, is available on the web at:
http://www.transcendentalists.com/emerson_essays.htm

Thoreau (1817-1862) built a log house in the semi-wilds where he retreated for two years. From this retreat emerged his famous book Walden.  Which advocated a simple existence, where one could live without distraction and look beyond the "surface of things".  Living in solitude in the wild, Thoreau maintained, leads to self understanding and the recognition of other species as kin.  Living in the wild, for Thoreau, was truly living. "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." (Thoreau (1854; 1965 ed) Walden (New York: Harper and Row)

Much of Thoreau's writing (including all of Walden) and pictures are available on the web at http://www.thoreau.niu.edu/ and another useful site is http://www.walden.org/

Muir was born in Scotland and emigrated to the US with his family at 11. Muir was fundamental in developing the idea of National Parks in the US, and also founded the influential wilderness protection organisation, The Sierra Club.  Fundamental to Muir's view was the idea that although the wilderness was vital to human health and well-being, it also had intrinsic value independent of any usefulness to humans and deserved human protection.  Muir regarded the wilderness as a sacred place, not threatening but a place for human self-discovery. http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/

Environmental Ethics

The idea of wilderness is important in debates on environmental ethics.  In the first volume of the journal Environmental Ethics, the philosopher William Godfrey-Smith published an article in which he argued that ‘wildernesses' are valuable for human beings in a variety of ways.  He maintained that they provide places of spiritual refreshment and renewal. He also argued that wildernesses are important scientific resources; that they protect potentially useful biological diversity and that they provide areas for human recreation.  Alongside these human values, Godfrey-Smith suggested that wildernesses have non-use or intrinsic values, and that they should be included as part of the human 'moral community'.

Critising Wilderness

The other side of the wilderness debate within environmental ethics, is the criticism of the idea of wilderness.  It can be seen as an ethnocentric concept, separating humans from nature, which encourages the neglect of non-wilderness environments. It can be seen as colonial and imperialist, ecologically flawed and misanthropic.

Ramachandra Guha argues that conservation is a fourth Western crusade along with Christianity, commerce and 'civilisation' in his paper 'Radical American Environmentalism and Wilderness Preservation: A Third World Critique'in Environmental Ethics 11/ 1 1989 71-83. His arguments are important - if wilderness is defined as ‘places with no human inhabitants' it could be used to justify the removal or native people, it could support the denial of land rights and block nomadic peoples access to traditional lands.

One of the reasons for encouraging TDN to be involved in the wilderness debate is to work towards an honourable definition of wilderness which helps to understand the human relationship with wild places.

In 'The Trouble with Wilderness, or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature'William Cronon in Callicott and Nelson (eds.) (1998) The Great New Wilderness Debate (Athens: University of Georgia Press) p.471-499 argues that ideas about wilderness must be alienated, because "the romantic ideology of wilderness leaves precisely nowhere for human beings actually to make their living from the land"  He argues that the modern environmental movement is the grandchild of romanticism. His arguments are centred around the debate on whether humans are apart from or part of nature. I hope that as pagans and Druids we can add a unique understanding of deity, some animist perspectives and some non-dualist perspectives. 

Cronon also asks a social justice question: is it rich, middle class people who like to go into wilderness and ignore the environmental problems in the urban areas where they live?  Again I think Druids have a valuable contribution to make to this debate and that our relationship with the natural world and our gods can bring an important and overlooked perspective to this argument.

Some of Cronon's arguments against the idea of wilderness - as well as some new ones - also emerge in a debate between the American environmental ethicists J.Baird Callicott and Holmes Rolston in The Environmental Professional in 1991. (The full debate is reproduced in Callicott and Nelson (eds.) The Great New Wilderness Debate University of Georgia Press 1998 pp.337-393.)

Callicott presented 3 key arguments against the idea of wilderness.
First, he argued that the idea of wilderness in the US is fundamentally ethnocentric, because it ignores the fact that the land had been occupied and managed by native Americans for thousands of years before the arrival of European settlers.
Second, he argues that the idea of wilderness is an ecologically static, unchanging one, as it were, 'pickling the land in aspic'.
Third, he argues that the idea of wilderness presupposes an undesirable fundamental separation of human beings from the land, resting on the belief that all human alteration of pristine nature degrades it, with the practical result that wildernesses become small 'temples' to nature, whilst outside wildernesses the destruction of the environment continues. The idea of wilderness, he argues, 'avoids facing up to the fact that the ways and means of industrial civilization lie at the root of the current global environmental crisis'. These objections to the wilderness idea, as Callicott tries to make clear, does not mean that wilderness areas in practice should be opened to development; particular wildernesses may in practice be important wildlife sanctuaries. Rather, Callicott, like Cronon, argues, humans should focus on sustainable development where humans live in harmony with ecosystems, instead of on the idea of wilderness.

However, Rolston fundamentally rejected this analysis. He maintains that many parts of the US landmass currently thought of as wilderness were very little used by native Americans, as they are 'high, cold, arid, and difficult to traverse on foot'so it cannot be said that native Americans fundamentally changed their nature.  He also argues that humans should not be excluded from wilderness areas, but they might be prevented from making particular kinds of uses of wilderness if that use would destroy the natural systems present there.  Underpinning Rolston's arguments is a profound awareness of the values present in wilderness areas.  Rolston insists that ecological systems, species and individuals all carry intrinsic value; a value not created by human beings and not dependent on human use or appreciation.  He argues that in wilderness these values are manifested most fully.  I agree with him there, but he goes on to say that the presence of human beings in wilderness areas would undermine the continued existence of such values.  From this perspective he argues, that the designation of wilderness areas is absolutely central to the protection of natural values.

Adding your views...

I'd like to hear from you and take this debate forward.  Let's bring in Druidic opinion.  How and where does deity fit into the understanding and subsequent treatment of wilderness?  Email us! 

Most of the debate above is focused on landscapes, but I think a modern understanding and definition of wilderness needs to be more holistic and include the role of people in wild landscapes and acknowledge the other species which live there.  What about deity and this spirit of wild places - how should our treatment of these places acknowledge these? ...

More information on wilderness

http://www.swlg.org.uk/
www.jmt.org/policy-wild-land.asp
http://wildlink.wilderness.net/wilderness.html
http://www.wildland-network.org.uk

Books and Journals

Mc Morran.R., Price.M.F. & Warren.R.c., ‘The call of different wilds: the importance of definition and perception in protecting and managing Scottish wild landscapes' Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Volume 51, Issue 2 March 2008 , pages 177 - 199.

Mark Harvey Wilderness Forever: Howard Zahniser and the Path to the Wilderness Act Published by Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books.

Oelschlaeger, Max. 1991. The Idea of Wilderness New Haven: Yale University Press.

Nash, Roderick. 1983. Wilderness and the American Mind New Haven: Yale University Press.

Guha, Ramachandra., 'Radical American Environmentalism and Wilderness Preservation: A Third World Critique' in Environmental Ethics 11/ 1 1989 71-83.

William Cronon 'The Trouble with Wilderness, or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature' in Callicott and Nelson (eds.) (1998) The Great New Wilderness Debate (Athens: University of Georgia Press) p.471-499.