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The trouble with wilderness
The trouble with wilderness
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More handpicked essays just for you.
The trouble with wilderness
The trouble with wilderness
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
In the 2013 online article, “The Chris McCandless Obsession Problem”, author Diana Saverin describes the Alaskan wilderness travel phenomenon along with attempting to uncover the ‘McCandless Pilgrims’ “root of motivation. Sparked by the release of both Jon Krakauer’s and Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild”, numerous individuals pack their backpacks and eagerly step into their (sometimes newly-bought) hiking shoes and tramp into the Alaskan Wild to pay homage to their hero Chris McCandless. Filled with personal anecdotes and interviews, Severin’s Outside article takes a new approach Into the Wild commentary by directing attention to the lives McCandless’s story affected indirectly rather than critiquing on McCandless himself. In response to what appears to be a huge amount of troubled McCandless-inspired tramping stories, Saverin provides an unbiased rationale as a attempt to explain why so many are “willing to risk injury, and even death, to..visit the last home of Alaska’s most famous adventure casualty”. Saverin begins her article with anecdote- telling the unfortunate experience of young lovers and adept adventure seekers, Ackerman and Gros.
Scott Russell Sanders’ passage from ‘Staying Put: making home in a Restless World’ gives readers the idea that roaming foreign territory and enforcing your ways is worse than staying put and adapting to your surroundings. Sanders achieves this mood through the use of parallelism, juxtaposition, rhetorical questions, and other rhetorical devices. Within the first sentence of the passage, Sanders paints a picture that Americans think that they are inherently good people, always the alpha of the pack that is the world. He describes our selfishness and need for acquiring more land as a ‘seductive virtue’, which can be found in lines 1-2. Sanders again pokes fun at the ‘American Lifestyle’ in lines 20-25.
“Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England” was published in 1983 by historian William Cronon. The book focuses on environmentalism and history of New England. Cronon describes the shift from Indian to European dominance, the European’s view of nature through an economic lens, and the anthropogenic changes to the environment that occured. Throughout the book, Cronon argues that the European colonists used various tactics to assert dominance over the Indians.
Feige's goal is not only to explain how exactly American History is rooted in nature, but also to stress the presence of nature in historical events that is often overlooked or entirely ignored by other historians. Throughout the book, the reader is made clear this is Feige’s primary goal of the text, demonstrating the importance of environmental history of the United States and prove that nature’s role in America’s past is more vast and influential than what is thought. Fiege continuously explains how historical events are sometimes entirely shaped by nature and proves so by exploring the geography, topography, weather, disease spread, and other features occurring in nature and how they
Being a survivor is a huge accomplishment that doesn 't come easy. There are many hardships that come along with the title survivor. A survivor is a person who survives, especially a person remaining alive after an event in which other have died or a person who copes well with difficulties in their life. Three important traits to be a survivor are stamina, logic, and bravery. {Olivia} First of all, in the story Trapped the main character, Aron Ralston uses stamina during his hike in Blue John Canyon when a boulder crushes his arm.
With the specific explanation about the influence of the Alaska National Interest Land Conservation Act, that it “specifically created the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, doubled the size of the former range, and restricted development in areas that are clearly incompatible with oil exploration”, Carter supports his argument that protecting the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is necessary from a professional perspective of the singer of a relative major act by using ethos, and it not only appeals to the audiences by referring his character as the former US president, but also helps the author to raise credibility of his central argument. In conclusion, Jimmy Carter adeptly utilizes pathos, logos, and ethos to strengthen his argument that the industrial development in the Arctic National Wild Refuge should be prohibited in his foreword to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and land, A photographic Journey by Subhankar
Former US President Jimmy Carter addresses the potential for the industrialization of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in “Foreword to Arctic National Wildlife Refuge: Seasons of Life and Land, A Photographic Journey” by Subhankar Banerjee. In this piece, Carter fights for maintaining the Wildlife Refuge by reasoning, with powerful stylistic features, that the beauty and vast importance it plays, overrules the wants of the industries. Carter uses his own journey through and support of the Arctic Refuge as evidence against the industries and their agenda. He outlines his own trip through the Arctic Refuge, writing of the wonders him and his wife Rosalynn experienced. By describing his own personal experience, he provides readers with evidence of the specialness the refuge is.
“The Oregon Trail,” written by Francis Parkman is a description of the experiences traveling into the unknown depths of the American west in 1846. The story is told from the first person point of view of Parkman, a scholar from Boston who embarks on the great expedition of traveling into the west in hopes of studying the lives of the Native Americans. His journey is also one of the first detailed descriptions of the beauty and the bounty of a largely uninhabited North American territory. But one of the most critical elements of the story was Parkman’s encounters and recruitment of members to his band of travelers who ultimately play a major role in the success of the western journey.
I disagree with Cronon’s notion that people’s idea of wilderness was historically powerful. Undoubtedly, the wilderness notion played a role in forming American identity. Cronon states the consequences of this role when he writes “Thus in the myth of the vanishing frontier lay the seeds of wilderness preservation in the United States, for if wild land had been so crucial in the making of the nation”(Pg 76). The described consequences aren’t particularly profound. Even though the wilderness notion resulted in establishing national parks and preservations, it did not prevent the further development of industry, consumption of forests and mining of natural resources.
The perception of wilderness can be problematic. One of the most prominent points that Cronon made in his evaluation is the ideology that wilderness is an illusion to escape reality. This perception can be ambiguous because it segregates humanity from nature, by establishing the idea that wilderness is separate from everyday life. Also, Cronon calls attention to the issue of dividing the land and calling it wilderness. The issue of this isolation is that it disintegrates humans and nature, rather than bringing them more in unity.
In the short story, “Eco defense” it discusses how people should have the right to defend their homes, and how their nature is being threatened. The author presents nature as wilderness, and he refers it to it being our primordial homeland of all living creatures. The importance of the place within in the piece is the American wilderness. The characters are not treating nature right because they are invading our nature .The author doesn’t agree with the characters for what they are doing, and he feels if nature is being threatened with invasion then we have the right to defend our nature which is our home.
The Alaskan Bush is one of the hardest places to survive without any assistance, supplies, skills, and little food. Jon Krakauer explains in his biography, Into The Wild, how Christopher McCandless ventured into the Alaskan Bush and ultimately perished due to lack of preparation and hubris. McCandless was an intelligent young man who made a few mistakes but overall Krakauer believed that McCandless was not an ignorant adrenalin junkie who had no respect for the land. Krakauer chose to write this biography because he too had the strong desire to discover and explore as he also ventured into the Alaskan Bush when he was a young man, but he survived unlike McCandless. Krakauer’s argument was convincing because he gives credible evidence that McCandless was not foolish like many critics say he was.
The structure of American civilization contains many constraints that guide a person through a normal life in its society. Rejecting the conventions of civilization, the way Chris McCandless did in Jon Krakauer’s Into The Wild, is justifiable because it allows one to find happiness in their lives. If someone disagrees with these constraints that exist, they should be allowed to live in a way that satisfies them as long as it lies within or just barely outside of the formal laws established by the U.S. government. Through this rejection, a person should be more concerned with their personal debts rather than social, discover their own solutions to the problems they face, and be able to express themselves in ways they see fit. A person should
Wilderness belongs to you. Can you guess who owns millions of acres of American wildlands? Well, maybe surprisingly, you do. You own magnificent red-rock canyons and beautiful turquoise rivers. You own barren desert plains and looming mountain peaks.
Wilderness belongs to you. Guess who owns millions of acres of American wildlands? You. You own magnificent red-rock canyons and beautiful turquoise rivers. You own barren desert plains and looming jagged mountain peaks.