Sigurd Olson article
“We need that wild country... even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be... a part of the geography of hope.” (Wallace Stegner as quoted in Belden Lane, Landscapes of the Sacred: Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality, Paulist Press, New York, 1988, p. viii).
“Wilderness is a fragile treasure, an exquisite gearing of soils and seasons and species with only limited ability to accommodate the intrusions of man. ‘...to cherish we must see and fondle,’ warned Aldo Leopold, ‘and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.’” (Seymour Fishbein, editor, “Where Man is a Visitor,” Wilderness U.S.A.,” National Geographic Society, Washington, DC, 1973, p. 17)
“Despite its well-established status in Roman Catholic and Orthodox contemplative traditions, wilderness... remains a confused and oft rejected co ncept in the denominations spawned by the reformers.” (Susan Bratton, Christianity, Wilderness and Wildlife, University of Scranton Press, 1993, p. 23)
“Yet wilderness remains one of the most ambivalent words in the language: it has two contradictory meanings representing two diametrically opposed values. The biblical meaning of wilderness, which was brought to America by our Puritan forebears, was “desert.” It was a hostile environment, a last refuge for outcasts, a place into which you drove the scapegoat laden with the sins of mankind.... Wilderness was unholy ground inhabited largely by devils.... [In contrast] to the frontiersman the wilderness was of course an adversary. Only after it had become largely subdued could the surviving fragments be enjoyed.... Not until the time of Thoreau and the transcendentalists of America did the term become generally respectable. (Paul Brooks, The Pursuit of Wilderness, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1971, p. 5).
Some Native American cultures do not have a word for wilderness or protect land as officially designated wilderness. They believe all land should be respected and all land is used only for survival, whether it be physical, spiritual or mental. If asked, we all have a different and unique definition for what wilderness means to us.
Credit: Wilderness and the American Mind, Roderick Nash, Yale University Press, 1982.
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"The outstanding scientific discovery of the Twentieth Century is not the television, or radio, but rather the complexity of the land organism. Only those who know the most about it can appreciate how little is known about it." - Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac (1949)
Wilderness is one part of the "land organism". Wilderness plays a significant role in the overall health of ecosystems. Rare and endangered plant and animal species require habitats that are relatively undisturbed so gene pools can be sustained, adaptations made, and populations maintained. Many rare and endangered species are indicators of ecological health, or they may play key roles in the balance of the ecosystem. Natural disturbance, like floods or fires, maintain natural processes, systems, and patterns. Few places are left where rivers, flood and trees are allowed to burn in natural cycles. Wildness is the heart of the "land organism".
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“New definition of wilderness emerging in Yukon Territory”
The 1964 United States Wilderness Act talks about wilderness "untrammeled by man." In the last five or ten years, the meaning of wilderness has been changing, says Juri Peepre, a Whitehorse native, “and northern Canada is leading the way.”
"In native languages, there is no word for wilderness," he says. To First Nations people, the natural landscape is simply where they live and the ecosystem is something they are part of....
"We have exported this idea south," he says. "Wilderness has come more to mean leaving areas untouched by industrial development, the idea of allowing the land to develop in its natural state, including people in the ecosystem."
The concept of wilderness in relationship to human activity is still a big debate in southern Canada and the United States, Peepre says. But north of 60 [degrees north latitude], especially in Canada, people are recognized as part of the ecosystem.
(1998 statement from the website of Environment Canada, Whitehorse, Yukon Territory; at www.taiga.net/index.html)
Spiritual Values
The spirit of the land can be understood through the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Buddhist or simply an individual’s connections through experience. Wild lands offer opportunities for reflection, for observation, for explorations of the ideas and experiences that can only be found in our wild areas. They have become churches of sorts, for our personal growth and our understanding of the relations between humans and the land.
cuts:
“We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with , the wilderness with its living and its decayed trees, the thunder cloud, and the rain which last three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.” (Henry David Thoreau, “Walden”)