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Editorials 2001-2002

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The Call and Meaning of
Wilderness in a Time of Global Turmoil

Brandon Marx

May 7, 2002

"Wilderness is the antidote to an overurbanized,
supertechnological [geopolitically conflicted] age."

- Michael Frome, Battle for the Wilderness

"They stood in awe at the foot
Of the green mountain.
Pleasure
Seemed to grow from fear for Gilgamesh.
As when one
comes upon a path in woods
Unvisited by men, one is drawn near

The lost and undiscovered in himself;
He was revitalized by
danger."

- Epic of Gilgamesh[1]

Be it in catching a glimpse of the interstellar throws of the
Perseus arm in our own Milky Way, or in a stroll through the vernal
pools emerging from Vermont snows, humankind has always sought
refuge in places wild.  No one captured this call of the
wild more gracefully than Henry David Thoreau, when he proclaimed
"in wildness is the preservation of the world."[2]  Thoreau's prophecy, perhaps more than
ever before, rings true, as we all steep in the daily ticker-tape of
warfare and its countless sufferings.  And so, the urgency
to experience wildness and to contemplate its beauty has seen a
steady rise.  On the empirical side of things, numerous
studies have shown how walking in the wilds reduces blood pressure
and stress, two essential ingredients on the road to healing.[3]  We also have the account of the
esteemed wilderness sage himself, testifying to the therapeutic and
spiritual effects of wilderness:

When I entered this sublime wilderness the day was
nearly done, the trees with rosy, glowing countenances seemed to
be hushed and thoughtful, as if waiting in conscious religious
dependence on the sun, and one naturally walked softly and
awe-stricken among them. I wandered on, meeting nobler trees where
all are noble, subdued in the general calm, as if in some vast
hall pervaded by the deepest sanctities and solemnities that sway
human souls.[4]

What exactly is wilderness, or the wildness in which the seeds of
our own preservation are sown?  One would think the
concept of wilderness would not be cause for equivocation or
misinterpretation.  Yet, the meaning of wilderness, and
thus the implications for its designation and management have been
ensnared in bureaucratic and philosophical debate since the
designation of the first wilderness area in 1924.[5]

In the Wilderness Act of 1964,[6] for example, there was much debate over the
precise wording of the definition of wilderness.[7]  The Act defines wilderness "in contrast
with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape
. . . as an area where the earth and its community of life are
untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not
remain."[8]  Douglas Scott, the policy director of
the Pew Wilderness Center, recently investigated the potential
weakening of the Act through a misreading of
untrammeled.  He explains that the word trammel has Latin
and Old French roots, "meaning a kind of net used to catch fish or
birds."[9]  Other definitions include
"unrestrained," "unrestricted," "unimpeded," "unencumbered," and
"unconfined."[10]  Yet, as Scott explains, trammel is
often misconstrued as trample, which creates the erroneous
connotation that wilderness can only exist in areas that have
hitherto been left untouched, unmanipulated, or undisturbed by
man.[11]

Such a purist concept of wilderness reduces the amount of land
eligible for designation.  More importantly, a purist
interpretation of wilderness was clearly not the intention of the
Act's drafter, Howard Zahniser who stated,

The problem with [using instead] the word . . .
'[u]ndisturbed' is that most of these areas can be considered as
disturbed by the human usages for which many of them are being
preserved; . . . [t]he idea within the word 'Untrammeled' of their
not being subjected to human controls and manipulations that
hamper the free play of natural forces is the distinctive one that
seems to make this word the most suitable one for its purpose
within the Wilderness Bill.

Michael Frome explains Zahniser's choice of untrammeled versus
undisturbed, pointing out that,

in this age of fallout there are no places left on the
earth free of human disturbance, not even at the polar icecaps *
Wilderness [rather] is where man's sounds, chemicals, and other
byproducts of civilized life are not dominant. It can be any area
where nature prevails or might prevail given the passage of
time.[12]

Recently, a debate over the meaning and management of wilderness
took root between the "wilderness manipulators" and those who
advocate a "hands off" approach.[13]  The manipulators, made up of
conservation biologists like Michael SoulÈ and Reed Noss, and
wilderness managers from the various land management agencies,
interpret the Act to require manipulations preserving or restoring
the "natural conditions"[14] of wilderness areas.  They
dismiss the "hands off" approach with accusations that only
anthropocentric humanists favor such a position with a bias toward
preserving "empty" alpine areas at the expense of the more
biodiverse lowlands.[15]

This is not a scientist versus lawyer debate,[16] although the vocal players fit those
roles.  As with most debates, there is science supporting
both sides.  The "hands off" group of wilderness
advocates, which is led by wilderness advocates like George Nickas,
of Wilderness Watch, and Michael McCloskey of the Sierra Club make
the case that wilderness is forever being abstracted from its true
wild nature.  This point was made most eloquently by the
mountaineer-philosopher Jack Turner, in his recent book, The
Abstract Wild.  McCloskey argues that the manipulators
fail to appreciate the scientific and public value of wilderness as
an unhumanized benchmark and, like economists, fashion elaborate
webs of reductionist management techniques that often prove
maladaptive.[17]  Scott Silver, the executive director
of Wild Wilderness,[18] repeatedly explains that he wishes the name
of his non-profit was not redundant, but unfortunately the placement
of "wild" in front of wilderness is needed more than ever today,
where recreation has become the new extractive industry for land
managers with fewer receipts from the traditional industries of
timber and hard-rock mining.[19]  Thus, "hands off" does not mean that
there should be no management whatsoever.  Rather,
management should focus instead on achieving the non-degradation and
solitude principles of the Act, not on engineering what we envision
as being most "natural."

Philosophically speaking, "how much confidence can we have
anymore in the supposition that a given association of plants and
animals is "natural"?[20]  McCloskey and SoulÈ agree that the
ecological theories based on nature achieving equilibrium through
successional stages have been supplanted by dynamic paradigms.[21]  So for those who see no inherent
value in wilderness qua wildness, it's interesting that this recent
shift in theoretical paradigms favors dynamic chaos over what the
majority of biologists believe will achieve wilderness qua maximized
biodiversity.  SoulÈ is correct in pointing out that the
goal of achieving what is most "natural" is one laid out by lawyers
and bureaucrats.[22]  And he is absolutely correct in
describing the thrust of those seeking the hands off, or "neglect"
approach, as he puts it, as anthropocentric humanists.[23]  But he fails to acknowledge the
practical merits behind supporting such neglect as an initial step
in attaining maximal biodiversity.[24]

How many citizens in Atlanta, Georgia, New York City, Portland,
Oregon, and Seattle, find solace in knowing that solitude has not
been destroyed and abstracted by motorized
recreationists?  These voters are a powerful
constituency.  Why not placate them and in so doing
accomodate the same group that is likely to support biodiversity
corridors in more enlightened legislative efforts down the
road?  What is fundamental, is that we all seek refuge in
our sacred places during this time of global turmoil, and try and
heal the deep wounds inflicted by so much conflict.  For
now, why not bow to the humanist project of protecting wilderness
qua sacred wildness in hopes that we might be improved
thereby?  We then might be empowered enough to take the
next step of seeking a maximally biodiverse nation and world.

Are the two positions mutually exclusive?  No, but they
conflict to the extent that the manipulators are willing to make
political concessions that sacrifice solitude and non-degradation in
the name of biodiversity; in one manner of speaking, manipulators
favor the aesthetic of life and its services rather than that of the
more austere, yet sublime places known to have a palliative effect
on the human soul, not just for elitest, Patagonia- clad
mountaineers mind you, but for anyone with the spirit to put on a
pair of boots and adventure.  With all due respect to
SoulÈ and Noss and our wilderness managers, lets keep our tinkering
to a minimum, for every time we tinker we further abstract the wild,
especially when it means introducing exotic species vectors like
snowmobiles and roads to achieve our manipulative ends.

______________

[1] Herbert Mason, Gilgamesh A Verse Narrative (1970)
cited in Max Oelschlaeger, The Idea of Wilderness: From Prehistory
to the Age of Ecology 39 (1991).

[2] Henry David Thoreau, Walking (1862).

[3] Charles Sourby, The Relationship Between
Therapeutic Recreation and Palliation in the Treatment of the
Advanced Cancer Patient (7/2/1998) available at http://www.recreationtherabpy.com/rt.html.

[4] John Muir, National Parks 325 (1913).

[5] Michael McCloskey, The Wilderness Act of 1964,
It's Background and Meaning, 45 Or. L. R. 288, 296 (1966)
[hereinafter McCloskey I]; Douglas W. Scott, "Untrammeled,"
"Wilderness Character," and the Challenges of Wilderness
Preservation, 11 Wild Earth 72 (Fall / Winter 2001 - 2002)
[hereinafter Scott].

[6] For a list of the bills leading up to the final
passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act, see McCloskey, supra
note 5, at n. 40.

[7] Scott, supra note 5, at 72.

[8] 78 Stat. 890-896, § 2(c) (1964) (codified at 16
U.S.C. 1131-1136 (1965)). (emphasis supplied).

[9] Scott, supra note 5, at 74.

[10] Id.

[11] Id.

[12] Michael Frome, Battle for the Wilderness 12
(1974).

[13] J. Baird Callicott, Michael P. Nelson,
Introduction to the Great New Wilderness Debate 1 (J. Baird
Callicott, Michael P. Nelson eds., 1998). The "hands off" group
relies on the language in the definition section of the Act, section
2(c) to support its position of limited human manipulation of wild
areas.

[14] 78 Stat. 890 § 2 (a).

[15] Michael E. McCloskey, Changing Views of What
the Wilderness System is All About, 76 DENV U. L. REV. 369, 373
(1999) [hereinafter McCloskey II].

[16] But see, Michael E. SoulÈ, The Social
Siege of Nature in Reinventing Nature 161 (Michael E. Soule, Gary
Lease eds., 1995) [hereinafter Reinventing Nature].

[17] McCloskey II, supra note 15, at n. 43, 55,
56 citing David N. Cole, Peter B. Landres, Threats to Wilderness
Ecosystems: Impacts and Research Needs, 6 Ecological
Applications 168 , 179, 180 (1996).

[18] See generally http://www.wildwilderness.org/.This
is a common introduction for Mr. Silver at his many speaking
engagements.

[19] Jan G. Laitos and Thomas A. Carr, The
Transformation of Public Lands, 26 Ecology L.Q. 140, 152-60
(1999).

[20] McClosky II, supra note 15 at 380.

[21] See also Reinventing Nature, supra
note 16, at 159-60.

[22] Id.

[23] Id.

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