The Spiritual Aspects of Wilderness

Section 3-i

by Sigurd F. Olson

Henry David Thoreau said many wise things, but perhaps the wisest and most prophetic was his well-known “In wilderness is the preservation of the world.” He said this well over a century ago during our pioneer era when the continent was still uncrowded and largely undeveloped. Even then he could see what was going to happen.

             During the century since he made his far-reaching statement, we have opened up a Pandora’s box of treasures. We have discovered space-time, the atom, nuclear energy, and probed the vastness of space... We are swiftly unraveling the secrets of life and learning to synthesize what we need for survival on this shrinking planet.

             We are adopting a mechanistic attitude toward life in which we believe science has all the answers, and are abandoning the ancient verities and an appreciation of intangible values. We are confusing mores with morals. We are embracing new beliefs, philosophies and nostrums which attempt to explain our relationship to the universe and to God. Our spiritual life is changing and as our roots are being cut, we attempt to substitute the new ideas of the space age for the humanities and the intuitive wisdom of the ages. As a result, within many of us is a sense of insecurity, and a gnawing unrest that somehow the age of gadgetry and science cannot still.

             A strange and violent world is ours, with the great silences replaced by the roar of jets and the cities we have built vibrating with noise. The smells of woods and fields and forests are now replaced by those of combustion and industry and our senses bombarded with impressions we have never known before.

             Here perhaps is a clue to our predicament: the world has changed too swiftly for modern man so recently out of the primeval. He still moves to ancient rhythms, and his spiritual needs are the same.... Still part of his background, the song of the wilderness is clear and strong.

             Even a century ago most people lived close to the soil. While cities were growing fast, the majority lived on farms and in small communities not much different from the days on the frontier. Though drastic changes were on the way, we were still not entirely removed from simplicity and naturalness. Then, spurred on by two major world conflicts, we were hurled into the whirring complexities of the machine age. We found ourselves cut off from any direct contact with the pioneer life we had known; we discovered almost overnight that we could live without having to hunt for food, carry wood or water, or even till the soil, that matters of security and community welfare were being taken care of by the state. After a long period of insecurity, danger, and fear, there seemed to be nothing more to worry about. Many believed the millennium had come.

             In spite of all this, there was something missing, a sense of loss and incompleteness. ...

We are now beginning to wonder if all this is leading to a fuller life.

             [In the early part of this century] when great areas [of our country] were still unmapped, I was fortunate in being able to live in the wilderness. ... I was aware that something happened to men when they went into the bush. As they shed their city habits and settled down to the hard physical work and simplicity of primitive living, they laughed more and took pleasure in little things. Men who had not watched a sunset or a moonrise for years suddenly found such phenomena thrilling. They listened to the winds and the sounds of the forests and the roar of rapids lulled them to sleep. Men who had not looked at a flower, a bird, or a squirrel for a long time were not too busy any more for such simple pleasures....

             I recall the strong loyalties and friendships developed on these expeditions, the feeling men had for each other and for the country itself, how they would plan from year to year and surround themselves in the

  meantime with mementos, maps and relics

                        from their trips, and count

          the days until they were

           heading into the bush

           once more.

                     And what did these

           men remember? Not the

          fishing, or the miles they

         had traveled, or the game

        they had killed. ... While

       they thought they came for

                      the fishing or sheer adventure and companionship of such forays into the wilds, what they really came for was to experience the deep and abiding satisfaction of primitive living under natural conditions.

             It was during those years that I discovered Thoreau and his belief that in

      wildness is the

    preservation of the

     world. While the

     idea intrigued me,

     it took a long time

   before I knew what it meant. Not until I had spent many years traveling the bush did the full impact of that truth strike home, that in wilderness and all it entails... is the preservation of the human spirit. ... I know now that unless we preserve the kind of spiritual values to be found there and while wilderness symbolizes, then man’s future is bleak. The stakes are high, the odds often overwhelming, but there is hope in a people who have not forgotten their past and who at heart are in love with America as it used to be. ...

             Should we ever forget and root out entirely any desire for wilderness, should we allow our engrossment with comfort and urban living and technological progress to completely erase our need for it, then I fear for America. A year ago at Portland I heard a speaker call a virgin stand of timber “cellulose cemeteries.” I was so stunned I couldn’t reply. But I didn’t forget “cellulose cemeteries.” It shocked me and it hurt me. I lay awake nights wondering how to answer.... I say now that if the time should ever come when Americans look at their last stands of virgin timber as cellulose cemeteries, ... then I would say that Americans have lost their battle.

             But I do not believe this will ever come to pass, for I have faith in Americans, in their inherent love of their recent frontier, in their built-in reverence for beauty and the natural scene, and above all in their constant hunger for it. ...

             The real significance of wilderness is a cultural matter. It is far more than hunting, fishing, hiking, camping or canoeing; it has to do with the human spirit. And what we are trying to conserve is not scenery as much as the human spirit itself.

             Not only has wilderness been a force in molding our character as a people but its influence continues, and will, if we are wise enough to preserve it on this continent, be a stabilizing power as well as a spiritual reserve for the future. The intangible values of wilderness are what really matter, the opportunity of knowing again what simplicity really means, the importance of the natural and the sense of oneness with the earth that inevitably comes with it. These are spiritual values. They, in the last analysis, are the reasons for its preservation. This is what people seek when they go to the outdoors, the reason for the nostalgia and longing, not only of Americans but of all peoples who have divorced themselves from their backgrounds.

             We are entering a new era in our thinking regarding wilderness. ... We are at last beginning to look at our remnants of wilderness with the maturity of people who can see beyond purely economic factors.

             A noted philosopher said recently... “It is possible to live in so large a world that the vexations of daily life come to feel trivial and the purposes which stir our deeper emotions take on something of the immensity of our cosmic contemplations.” ...

             We are trying to bridge the gap between the old verities and the strange, conflicting ideologies and beliefs of the new era of technology. One of the most vital tasks of modern man is to bridge this gap. ... There is an uncertainty and even a fear as to the future. ... It is here that wilderness will play its greatest role, offering

this age a familiar base for explorations of the soul and the universe itself.

By affording opportunities for the contemplation of

beauty and naturalness as well as further understanding of

the mysteries of life

in an ecologically

stable environment,

it will inculcate reverence

and love and show the way to a humanity in which man becomes at last

an understanding and appreciative partner with nature....

             Cultural maturity comes slowly and the old conflicts between materialism and the intangible values will flame on many battle fronts for years to come.

             When the time arrives that we look on wilderness... with the eyes of understanding and appreciation of its real meaning, then and only then will the full measure of Thoreau’s statement be realized, that “in wildness is the preservation of the world.”

                     ----------------------

       Abridged from a speech by Sigurd Olson given in the early 1960s.