Wilderness (#8)

 Before this class, I always thought of wilderness as the isolated, dangerous, and deserted parts of the world. In every movie growing up the wilderness is the place that the character is never supposed to venture until they finally escape. As I thought about this I reflected on the fact that every movie and adventure starts with stepping out of our world into this unknown wilderness. By the end, the wilderness becomes a place of discovery and appreciation about the world around them. 

    The wilderness also implies a sense of separation. A split between two world that will never mix and were never meant to. The wilderness if anything tries to draw us away to keep this distance. But what really is it? Is it really just a scary place that no man should touch or did we just make that up? Did our fear of the unknown and undiscovered lead us to believe the wilderness is inherently bad? This made me think back to discussions in class where we talked about how men were always trying to conquer the land and claim it for their own rather than learn how to coexist with in like the original inhabitants did. I think growing up in our society and learning about our history we are so used to claiming things, naming them, and making them our own for our own security. Domesticating animals, industrial tourism, and overtaking resources to create more for our societies. We see the world as our birth right, ours for the taking. We see what it can do for us and exploit its resources for our personal gain. Everything we can control and monitor we see as safe and good. This sense of wilderness throws this all out of the window. If I don't own this land, and you don't own this land, why is it even out here and isn't it such a waste? Where can we build the next city, expand the next suburban neighborhood, create the next part, new roads, it goes on and on. Our desire to overcome the world around us makes us forget what even is really around us. 

    I had never really seen the world from this perspective until this class. Of course I know we are very industrialized and cities are constantly growing, but I did not seen how much we cannot bear to be alone in nature. It makes us almost feel insecure to be without our normal comforts of home. One thought I had a few years ago was brought back into my mind as we went through this year. I was driving with my family to Arizona and going through roaring hills and cliffs. The thought I had was, "If everyone is complaining about overpopulation why don't we just use all this land. It's not being used for anything and we're going on for miles." When I had this thought I was seeing nature as a business opportunity, a plan to create our lives better and fix problems we see for our society. As I learned throughout this class, I look back to myself and thought how ignorant could I be. I saw empty space as a waste even though it was filled with some of the most amazing scenes. I thought that since it was not serving people that it was not serving its purpose. I saw nature as a resource to be used and not as an entity to be protected. 

    Nature does not need to be 'useful' to be important to us. Nature does not even need us at all. We need to get back to the idea that nature is our entire world and we are equally apart of it as the trees and the rocks. We need to have more appreciation of it even as just an idea. We do not need to harness its wildness but rather observe it free. By opening ourselves up to this idea we gain a bit of freedom from ourselves and learn to love the world around us.