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Personal Narrative: The Trouble With Wilderness

828 Words4 Pages

Hannah Siegworth
Professor Heather Swan
English 153
1 March 2023
Personal Narrative: The Trouble with Wilderness The importance of a “pure” nature was introduced to me at a young age. Our family cabin in northern Wisconsin served as an abode in which we would go to “get away” from the hustle and bustle of the city. This mindset carried me through my childhood, and only when I read “The Trouble with Wilderness” did I begin to question and transform this viewpoint. In “The Trouble with Wilderness”, William Cronon describes the importance of valuing the wilderness in every form, while reasoning for more accessible and respected areas that I newly define as nature. William Cronon portrays nature and wilderness in a much more humble and enlightened …show more content…

Many individuals fall prey to this viewpoint today, beholding places like Yosemite and Rocky Mountain National Park with reverence and trepidation. This idea of the romantic sublime, as Cronon points out, is a threat to the wilderness in every sense. Cronon elaborates on the importance of valuing natural areas all around us, whether it is a “tree in the garden” or a “tree in the forest”. Ignoring a massive part of nature close to home may mean people are disrespecting it, resulting in things like pollution, deforestation, or simply cutting down trees because they obstruct a view. Each of these actions summed up results in many complications for the environment. However, the opposite is true if these places were valued more: many more individuals would respect and therefore not destruct areas of wilderness that simply are not a part of the romantic …show more content…

My dad truly shaped my mental image of the wilderness, encouraging us to appreciate beautiful landscapes and inherit his love for traveling to these seemingly untouched lands. His stories of hiking through Bryce Canyon, Arches, and Canyonlands National Park in his 20s inspired me to do the same with my own life. These stories describe some of the most beautiful, desolate, pristine places on the planet, and truly seemed to contribute to his identity, and I wanted to do the same. I pictured myself traveling alone with nothing but a backpack to “find myself” or discover a new meaning of life, but learning about the romantic sublime indisputably altered this dream in a way I did not think

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