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The Wilderness Idea

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Wilderness Idea
The wilderness is a valuable resource for scientific, educational, scenic, and historical research. Presidents such as Theodore Roosevelt advocated the preservation of the American wilderness for its national history, beauty, and traditions. However, as the American society evolved to live in the city, the suburbs, and other residential areas, the wilderness was becoming a wasteland that numerous companies intended to build houses, factories, and cities. William Stegner, a prolific author, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award is known for his novels reflecting the love for nature and the West. In “The Wilderness Idea” from his book The Sound of Mountain Water, Stegner’s idea to preserve the wilderness is …show more content…

When the first Europeans arrived in America, they were intimidated by the extensive American wilderness and the indigenous people who inhabited it. However, as brave explorers, mountain men, fur trappers, and other colonists expanded westward for resources and land, the wilderness became exploited and reduced. “I want to speak for the wilderness idea as something that has helped form our character and that has certainly shaped our history as a people…” (Ravitch 603). The wilderness impacted the growth of the American civilization and became an important piece of American history. Without discovering and confronting the wilderness, America would remain a small country and without an opportunity to own land and rely on Europe and Africa for resources. Some people may argue that the wilderness did not impact American history. However, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” created the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a program designed to conserve and improve the national forests, and employed over three million men in nine years. Not only did it improve the recreational facilities in the parks, it also benefited the unemployed men with a job to financially maintain themselves and their parents during the depression. The wilderness has impacted famous American writers like Henry David Thoreau to write his masterwork, Walden, and discover his beliefs about transcendentalism and civil disobedience. Thoreau’s Walden continues to impact writers, environmentalists, and naturalists while his essay, “Civil Disobedience,” inspired numerous leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi to employ non-violent protests movements to achieve their respective

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The history of the United States of America is vast and complex, encompassing thousands of events that all helped form it into a modern day superpower. When reflecting on the history of America, many historians remind us of major events that changed the course of the country's development. Many authors of these works analyze American historical events through the perspective of the people living through that event or through a 21st-Century viewpoint. However, there are fewer authors who are able to successfully illustrate more about an event than what can be visibly seen or inferred by a reader. Mark Feige, a history professor and writer, is one of the few authors who is able to uncover additional information in American history.

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This quote connects to the theme “The effect of the wilderness on American imagination and Life on the road” in that it explains how others had the same mindset as Chris McCandless did, they are willing to die in the wilderness all alone and this is important because Chris McCandless actions have inspired many people to do the same as he has done, he inspired them to go out and make something out of themselves and find their

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“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.

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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.

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I had the opportunity to go to Mexico and visit the Yucatan rainforest and this lead me to be able to explore nature and feel the peaceful impact it can have on someone 's life. Chris McCandless was determined to create a new life for himself and be the one to control his own destiny. “Chris changed his name, gave the entire balance of a twenty-four-thousand-dollar savings account to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet…. His family had no idea where he was or what had become of him until his remains turned up in Alaska”. This quote is from Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild and shows how McCandless left everything from his old life in order to create a new life for himself.

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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.

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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.

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