Wallace Stegner's Wilderness Letter Essay

According to William Cronon’s “The Trouble with Wilderness”, the main concerns with the wilderness term being humanly constructed and lack of concern with the local environments. Cronon emphasize much of the historical and philological meanings of wilderness as a human construct via spiritual and religious perspectives. He desired for people stop putting so much emphasis on the above and beyond that is out of our reach and focus on the present. He pushed this into the idea of one should start putting emphasis and care into one’s own environment rather than just focusing on environments beyond the local one. He believes change should start locally.

John Muir, a brilliant Transcendentalist, has written hundreds of enlightening environmental essay to emphasize the adamant need to save these sacred kings of the forests, the Redwoods. Within Muir’s vivid and emotional entries, specifically “Save the Redwoods”, John utilizes rhetorical devices such as personification, analogy, and Religious allusion in order to express the vital need to save the trees.

Stegner wants to conserve the untouched land because he fears a world with no silence. He argues for the preservation of Robbers’ Roost country, as an example, “It is a lovely and terrible wilderness, such as wilderness as Christ and the prophets went out into… Save a piece of country like that intact, and it does not matter in the slightest that only a few people every year will go into it. That is precisely its value (Stegner, Wilderness Letter).” Saving the untouched lands, he contends, is a reminder of how uncontrolled the Earth is and how timeless it remains. Others disagree with this viewpoint, one of those people being American forester, Gifford Pinchot. In his writing “The Fight for Conservation,” Pinchot argues that conservation

In “The Trouble with Wilderness,” William Cronon illustrates the paradox within the notion of wilderness, describing that if wilderness is that which lies beyond civilization -- beyond humankind, then so is the notion of nature outside the realm of the human... that humans are therefore, unnatural. Further, he explains that if our concept of nature (and ultimately our concept of God) is outside of humanity, then our existence is synonymous with the downfall of nature. That wilderness is purely a construct of civilization is central to this argument.  For example, Cronon asserts that “the removal of Indians to create an ‘uninhabited wilderness’---uninhabited as never before in human history of the place---reminds us just how invented, just how constructed, the American wilderness really is” (pg.79). Instead of in isolation from civilization, Cronon finds that his most spiritual experiences with nature have always been closer to home… a sense of wildness (versus wilderness) can be found in one’s backyard, gazing from a front porch, and in the melding of the human experience with mother nature. One of Into the Wild’s final scenes drives home this idea by altering the literal point of view that main character, Chris McCandless, has had of both himself and of the world since the beginning of his two year journey.  Into the Wild attempts to dramatizes Cronon’s argument to rethink wilderness; we will examine how the film succeeds, and where it fails, to support its premise.

This type of exposure to wilderness is merely an extension of the many desires that are inherent in the American culture to which society is dependent. In other words, wilderness has become part of the consumer society, the same society that deep ecology claims to aim to reconceive. Guha refers to this as a consequence of economic and political dominance. This dominance leads to wilderness being a manifestation of American nationalism. Admittedly, the American national park system is one of America’s defining characteristics. Hence, Guha states that Western civilization is the ideal medium for both wilderness and civilization to live in conjunction yet this medium dismisses its economical and social consequences.

This essay depicts a relationship between society and nature, referring to the woods. Society is changing rather quickly which prevents an individual from truly seeing everything around them. It has destroyed nature and the clarity that the woods provide. Berry notices how people do not see where they are anymore. Many are going through life never actually looking to see what is around them or observing closer. He goes into the woods and immerse himself in nature. As Berry states, “The faster

The beautiful blossoms that bloom in Californian spring, the summer daisies alongside the cooling lake, long after the summer the trees have lost their leaves entering autumn to fresh white snow out in the mountains. Nature is able to show us its true beauty without any falseness and modifications. After all, is it not ironic how people go to museums to look at paintings of colorful flowers, green hills, and clear water streams; those are beauties that can easily be observed in real life outside of the urban environment which are surrounded by them, or how people buy recordings of the calming sounds of nature, similar to what you would listen to at night in the woods or smell nature aromas of the candles. What we are doing is trying to mislead our minds and pretend to think that we are in the woods but are instead cornered inside our small, well-furnished, and full -with-technology apartment.

In life, we have to make choices. We make choices on what we eat, what we wear, and how we are going to live our lives. Choices are what make us, us. As we grow older, the choices become more difficult, as we struggle to find our way on the path of life. Often we are searching for a light to lead us in the right direction. For some of us, the light shines brightly in the distance and helps us find our way along the long and bumpy path of life, while for others the light seems to never come, and we struggle along, battling the darkness. We are consistently looking for an escape, a place where we find who we are, what our role is in the world and the meaning of life. Rodrick Nash states in Wilderness and the American Mind, “Wilderness appealed

Within Aldo Leopold’s Thinking Like a Mountain and Annie Dillard’s Living Like a Weasel there is a communal theme, which incorporates the conflict between people and nature. Throughout Dillard’s piece, she uses comparisons between the life of humans and the life of a wild weasel while applying the theme of freedom of choice. After an unexpected encounter with a weasel, Dillard concludes that humans can learn from the wild freedom of weasel. She states, “...I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical senses and the dignity of living without bias or motive” (Dillard 8). In Aldo Leopold’s writing, his overall motive is to communicate to the reader that we humans must not destroy the wilderness, as

To begin his conversation, Stegner conveys that conservation is not just about recreation, but nature is our measurement of where we are as a society. He compares wilderness to “a scientific yardstick” that measures the “natural balance” of nature and industry. This statement conveys the Stegner view and also lays the groundwork for his letter. He also writes “We need wilderness preserved . . .because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health (Stegner, Wilderness Letter).” The idea of what nature we have left is an undisputable fact of the direction mankind is heading towards. Theodore Roosevelt agrees with this notion

While both essays discuss the importance of wilderness and conservation, Theobald and others focus on landscape connectivity and climate change. In contrast, the Jarvis essay discusses the roles women played in the conservation movement. In the Theobald essay, more scientific phrases are used to persuade the audience of how detrimental the landscape connectivity issues can truly be. However, the Jarvis essay uses the word “women” more often than any other word to help the reader understand how crucial women were to conservation of the wilderness. It is obvious that both essays persuade readers by using different phrases and arguments to convey their respective points.

The recent resurgence of interest in the introduction of ecology back into urban areas serves as evidence to support the claim that wilderness exists as the constant. As humans attempt get back in touch with nature, we actually continue to distance ourselves from wilderness. We attempt to fit nature into the spaces convenient for us, as we continue to expand our urban areas, instead of allowing it thrive in its own environment. Timothy Morton asserts, “Putting something called Nature on a pedestal and admiring it from afar does for the environment what patriarchy does for the figure of Woman. It is a paradoxical act of sadistic admiration” (5). In other words, scattering “green spaces” and “wilderness encounters” throughout cities, acts to oppress the true wilderness. In Abbey’s text, Seldom Seen Smith functions to oppose these urban wilderness experiences. Smith’s touring business does not function as a “get rich quick” scheme characteristic of capitalistic urbanites who seek offer an idealized wilderness adventure to their customers.

During his time, Aldo Leopold was a conservationist who believed in the longevity of the land and that we should protect it, even if we must protect the land from ourselves. While this was an unpopular opinion, realizing that the land and animals naturally work together in a symbiotic relationship to protect one another was very apparent to Leopold. He believed that humans should be doing our best to lessen our impact on the environment. Time has caught up with Leopold’s ideologies and it is time that our efforts and contributions to the earth did too.

Often used in many different places is the comparison of the two terms, “nature” and “wilderness”. The two are usually seen together. “Wilderness” is usually one of the first things one thinks

This quote describes the deeper, spiritual approach to nature. This deeper approach allows us to be more open and sensitive to ourselves and nonhuman life.