A1768476 Alisha Vania Widianti THP101D 13/07/2018 Widianti 1 By definition, wilderness is an uncultivated, uninhabited, and inhospitable region. With the rapid growth of human footprint in the world, the wilderness; where there is minimal disturbances from activities conducted by the modern society gains greater importance. The wilderness is home for many plants and animal species, including animals that are at a brink of extinction. Thus, the wilderness becomes a prominent refuge for endangered species. In addition to this, the wilderness is also essential part in influencing the local climate and withdrawing carbon dioxide. Therefore, areas of wilderness is essential in underpinning key planetary functions. However, many environmentalists have differing ideas about the wilderness and ways of thinking regarding one’s attitudes towards the wilderness. In his work The Gift of Wilderness, Wallace Stegner asserts that wilderness is a gift that we must preserve. On the contrary, William Cronon in The Trouble with Wilderness, critiques the notion of wilderness itself, whilst addressing the issue of romanticization with the idea of wilderness. As our attitudes on our way of thinking about the wilderness are not always appropriate, the probability that these attitudes may undermine our efforts to act more responsibly towards nature is much greater. This is because our ways of thinking about the wilderness influences how we act towards nature. For instance if we regard the wilderness solely as a place of recreation, disregarding the global importance of wilderness itself, then the wilderness itself would be regarded as a place where one seeks refreshment through relaxation and enjoyment. Thus, the sustainability and the preservation of the wilderness itself would not be paid much attention. Stegner’s essay title alone reveals his attitude about his approach towards the wilderness, as he urges society to be responsible towards their attitudes towards the wilderness because the wilderness is a gift. Stegner demonstrates how the wilderness is a gift to society by using the example of his granddaughter returning from a month’s Outward Bound exposure. Stegner concedes that, “She (his grand daughter) has felt that bigness outside herself; she has experienced the birth of awe”. In making this comment, Stegner insinuates that human beings are able to set aside their selfimportant tendencies, as one experiences wilderness. This is because, one’s interaction A1768476 Alisha Vania Widianti THP101D 13/07/2018 Widianti 1 with the wilderness is a humbling experience, causing individuals to come into the realization that there are bigger forces than his or herself, which is nature. This notion is similar to Aldo Leopold’s notion in his work, Thinking Like A Mountain, which involves a holistic way of thinking regarding the environment. Stegner also uses his own personal experience to extend this idea as he writes, “‘That wind knew me. I knew it. Every once in a while sixty six years after that baptism in space and night and silence, wind across grassland can smell like that to me, as secret, perfumed, and soft, and tell me who I am.” In using this example, Stegner asserts that the humility that one experiences from their experience with the wilderness is able to make him or her understand themselves much more. As a result, Stegner stresses the importance of preserving wilderness by making the comment that, “I wish we could establish a maximum system of wilderness preserves, and then by a mixture of protection and education, let all Americans learn to know their incomparable heritage and their unique identity”. In saying this, Stegner emphasizes that the wilderness is indeed a gift because of its heritage and unique identity. Stegner also urges society to listen to the land and hear what it has to say, in order for society to understand what it can and can not do over the long period of time, as resources are finite and limited. Moreover, the only way to listen to the land and hear what it has to say, is to have access to natural wild land. Cronon has a different idea and attitudes towards the notion of wilderness. Cronon argues that the wilderness is a ‘product of human civilization’ because the concept of wilderness is an idea that only exists in the context of changing human attitudes and cultural narratives surrounding nature. This is evident from how the attitudes towards perceptions of wilderness evolved throughout time, as the word ‘wilderness’ referred to the word ‘waste’ and had negative connotations in the 18th century whereas by the 20th century, wilderness was regarded the preservation of the world. This transformation had occurred because of the convergence of ideas we have associated with the wilderness; the sublime and the frontier. By the 18th century, the wilderness is romanticized as a sublime landscape were strong and powerful landscapes where one can find a glimpse of God. Thus, at the sight of these sublime landscapes, one can not help but feel insignificant and reminded of their own mortality. A1768476 Alisha Vania Widianti THP101D 13/07/2018 Widianti 1 Thus, the wilderness is romanticized as an icon of the sublime: a symbol of God’s presence on Earth. Other than the sublime, the cultural movement that helped transform the wilderness was the powerful romantic attraction of primitivism. This attraction to primitivism was embodied through the national frontier myth, which stands for the wild freedom of America’s past and also represents a natural alternative to the artificial modern civilization. As a result of this convergence, Cronon argues that this romanticization and idealization of the wilderness represents a flight from history because it is “the false hope of an escape from responsibility, the illusion that we can somehow wipe clean the slate of our past and return to the tabula rasa that supposedly existed before we began to leave our marks on the world”. This is because no matter which angle one regards wilderness from, as the idea of wilderness has evolved over time, the concept of wilderness simply provide society with the illusions that can be used to escape the cares and troubles of the world. For instance, if the wilderness is regarded as the frontier, the wilderness is a savage world at the dawn of civilization, in which its transformation represent the very beginning of the national historical epic. Whereas if the wilderness is regarded as a the grandeur sublime, it becomes “the home of a God that transcends history by standing as an entity that remains untouched and unchanged by time”, according to Cronon. In addition to this, the wilderness embodies an central paradox in which humans are regarded entirely outside nature. Hence, the wilderness becomes a natural antithesis to the unnatural civilization, as the wilderness is a separate and untouched entity in which it is the remaining place of freedom where society can recover their true selves that were lost due to the corrupting influences of life in modern civilization. Nonetheless, the idealizations regarding the wilderness leads society to think that we separate ourselves from nature, as we regard the wilderness as something distant and remote, without considering ourselves living as members of the natural world. According to Cronon, society continues to take part in civilized society while at the same time, “imagining that our true home is in the wilderness”. Approaching the concept of A1768476 Alisha Vania Widianti THP101D 13/07/2018 Widianti 1 wilderness in this manner leads to a separation of humankind, as members of society, from what we could consider to be our ‘real’ home which is the wilderness. Although our ‘real’ lives take place in a civilized realm, humankind continues to fantasize about escaping from artificial modern civilization and live in the wilderness. Before moving on towards criticism towards the notion of the wilderness, Cronon firstly states that he does celebrates with other individuals who love wilderness as well as the beauty and power it contains. As every individual who has spent time in the wilderness is able to invoke images and eerily real sensations regarding the wilderness, as he or she has embedded these images and sensations in reaction to the wilderness lastingly in their memories. These memories cause human beings to recognize that “you were in the presence of something irreducibly nonhuman, something profoundly Other than yourself”, conceded Cronon. The beauty and the power within wilderness conceded by Cronon is also one of Stegner’s main ideas, as Stegner argues that being in contact with the wilderness causes human beings to recognize a force that is greater than themselves. Another idea that both environmentalists share in common is the idea that the wilderness must be preserved, as the wilderness possess great importance to society. In spite of this, the arguments that Cronon makes is criticized by environmentalists. Cronon’s argument that the wilderness is a natural world apart from society and human influence goes against with the idea of preservation and conservation of nature itself. Environmentalism is a movement that cares about the interactions between society and nature and their interdependence, and regards the environment including the wilderness as a part of the world that we live in today. If the wilderness was truly a social construct that is apart from humanity, then the whole movement of environmentalism would not have considered preserving the wilderness in the first place. Essentially, Cronon’s argument dismisses and shifts away the sole importance of the wilderness itself in the world that we live in. A1768476 Alisha Vania Widianti THP101D 13/07/2018 Widianti 1
