445 The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature

Message no. 445[Branch from no. 439] Posted by Thomas Culhane (1311520071) on Tuesday, February 20, 2007 2:58pm Subject: The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature

Well done Dana!

Your post made me think of a point that William Cronon often makes in his writings, and is made again and again in a volume he edited called "Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature"

Cronon says famously that what we are interested in preserving is not "nature" but a "landscape painting". He points out that even Yosemite National Park is not and never was "wilderness" but was a "garden" maintained by the native Americans before the Europeans arrived. After this, John Muir and architects like Frederick Law Olmsted worked on "managing the landscape" so that it conformed to European standards of beauty. It is this that we are trying to "preserve".

You can read his argument in his essay "The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature" here:

http://history.wisc.edu/cronon/Trouble_with_Wilderness_Main.html

By the way, let us formally, from today, redefine what we mean by NATURE in this course, and all try to use the same language so that we can follow Cronon's arguments and not "get back to the wrong nature".

From now on, let us use "nature" to refer to "everything" -- including human built environments, and use "WILDERNESS" to refer to spaces where humans have not interfered. If we do this we will avoid unnecessary arguments that confuse us.

So, please class, read Cronon's essay above, and I think we will all be on the same page!

Okay?