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RETHINKING THE WILDERNESS solomn
The beauty of wilderness
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More handpicked essays just for you.
RETHINKING THE WILDERNESS solomn
The beauty of wilderness
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Recommended: RETHINKING THE WILDERNESS solomn
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.
In his essay, “First Wilderness: America’s Wonderland and Indian Removal from Yellowstone National Park,” Mark David Spence argues that the creation of Yellowstone National Park is an early illustration of removing native peoples as a way to “preserve” nature. The idea of Yellowstone being a pristine and untouched wilderness, is challenged by Spence as he brings to light the presence of Indigenous peoples and communities who had occupied the land prior to the national park being established. He advocates for a better understanding of Yellowstone National Park’s history, encompassing the dispossession of the Indigenous peoples within the area. Spence explains how the wilderness preservation of Yellowstone ignores and dismisses any connection
This paper intends to investigate Jon Krakauer’s book Into the Wild (1996) through ecological perspectives, and how man takes/claims his own place in/above nature. Human beings are continuations of natural evolution/universe, but humans enjoy and are the centre of everything. Krakauer uses William Cronon’s essay The Trouble with Wilderness, where he argues the idea of sublimity in which the concept of anthropocene comes into being. Additionally, politicised nature, evidenced in, for example, The Wilderness Act of 1964, authorizes Congress to designate wilderness areas, reinforcing and legitimizing colonial expansion, blurring the line between nature and culture. I shall also discuss John Krakauer’s Into Thin Air (1997), where we see how climbing
But the older I get, the more reading I do, the more that I experience, I realize that nature is not solely a utensil for our own use and advancement as a species. Wallace Stegner’s “Wilderness Letter”, written to the outdoor Recreation and Resources Review Commission, outlines his views of the natural world and of wild places. He states that nature is valuable because it helped to shape us into what we are today. In reading Stegner’s letter I found that I agreed with a great deal of his ideologies. He
“So many people live in unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation” (57). Chris McCandless was determined to not be one of those men, he strived for a life in solitude, away from the demands of society. For that reason he went on an epic transcendental experience that took him from Mexico to Alaska. Along the way, he met and made an impact on peoples’ lives, people like Wayne Westenberg and Ronald Franz. Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild discusses Chris’s journey, and makes the reader question Chris’s reasons for going out into the wild.
When thinking of the wilderness one might picture a scene from a camp site. Untamed dense forest, and endless jungle probably come first to mind and although this might be one meaning of wilderness, Mellor’s perception of wilderness and pastoral opens our thoughts on how we view the unpredictable and the known. In “Lure Of The Wilderness” by Leo Mellor, he shows the meaning of the unexplored wilderness and the surprises that come with the unknown, while humans try to tame what is wild and create a pastoral environment around them. Mellor’s writing helps understand hidden aspects in the short story “Wild” by Lesley Arimah, when Ada is blindsided with a plane ticket to visit her aunt in Africa. She travels to a place mostly unknown to her, besides the relatives living there.
Heading into the wilderness to hike may seem like a fun adventure, but what would it be like to stay out there for 35 weeks straight, knowing that some of the most ferocious animals are nearby? In “A Walk in The Woods” by Bill Bryson, Bill examines the dangers and challenges of hiking the Appalachian Trail, which stretches 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine. Along the way, Bryson encounters various obstacles and difficulties that force him to push his limits. Some of the things Bryson encounters range from animals to diseases to dangerous weather conditions. The theme of danger that must be faced to be overcome is presented throughout the book when Bryson and Katz must confront the risks of the Appalachian Trail.
In his 1995 essay “The Trouble with Wilderness,” William Cronon declares that “the time has come to rethink wilderness” (69). From the practice of agriculture to masculine frontier fantasies, Cronon argues that Americans have historically defined wilderness as an “island,” separate from their polluted urban industrial homes (69). He traces the idea of wilderness throughout American history, asserting that the idea of untouched, pristine wilderness is a harmful fantasy. By idealizing wilderness from a distance, he argues that people justify the destruction of less sublime landscapes and aggravate environmental conflict.
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.
The frontier ideology is defined as an allure of nature that is culturally spread and shaped by people’s ideals of how the wilderness should truly be. The problematic effects resulted by McCandless’ journey into the undomesticated land of Alaska are analogous to the quandaries that the frontier ideology creates for our environmental. Just as the ideology is embedded in his mind; it is also embedded in the minds of many others. However, McCandless story can actually teach us about the plights with our culture and in doing so, allows us to move forward. This has turned into a myth in which many believe that the most important parts of nature are areas that have been untouched by human hands.
Wilderness can be characterized as an uncultivated, uninhabited, and unwelcoming area. In the article, "The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature," William Cronon states, "wilderness stands as the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully infected the earth" (Cronon 1). Cronon is stating that the wilderness on earth is untouched, not harmed by man and is an interesting human progress all alone. There is not only one definition for wilderness, regardless of whether individuals consider it to be the "urban wilderness" of New York or the wilderness of South America, each individual has his or her own particular view of wilderness.
Cronon incorporates specific attitudes surrounding the connotation of wilderness into his argument. Cronon introduces a time when society viewed the wilderness as “a sacred American Icon, during the nineteenth century (Cronon 8).” This idea referring to the “wilderness” as an American Icon highlights how wilderness was romanticized and idolized. This “Iconic” idea changes quickly to society claiming the wilderness as “masculine in nature (Cronon 9).” This shift in the connotation of wilderness demonstrates how socially perpetuated institutions, such as patriarchy, influence symbols.
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.
I think the most notable natural aspect of this location was there was no cell phone service which really disconnected people from their lives back in Davis. After reflecting on this trip, I realized that we used nature as an escape from our daily lives. Using nature as an escape from our daily lives aligns with the sublime ideology that completely separates humans and nature. William Cronin argues in, “The Trouble of Wilderness” that the idea of wilderness is a product of human civilization which contradicts the idea that wilderness is natural as people tend to believe that wilderness is the last place on
These themes of self-reflection are present in modern society, in which the wilderness serves as a location to desert oneself from their surroundings in order to discover one’s own individuality and the gratification life has to offer, as humanity restricts the population from seeking into one's true