Cronon and Nature

         Our relationship with nature has always been complicated to say the least. It seems rather impossible for us to figure out how we relate to the natural environment.  What I enjoyed most about Cronon’s article is that he was able to find common ground between what is nature and what we want it to be. 

I think Cronon is right in that the problem lies with how society defines nature and/or the wilderness. If we see it as something wild, then we immediately take ourselves out of the equation. If nature is at its purest when it is not inhabited by humans, then how are we supposed to interact with it?  More often than not, it is easy for us to forget that nature is not something “over there,” but in fact, it is all around us. 

I appreciated Cronon’s article because it provided a more balanced approach to nature. If we only focus our attention to the wild, then we run the risk of losing ourselves in the process. Cronon argues that “idealizing the distant wilderness too often means not dealing with the environment in which we actually live” (85). I think sometimes it might be easier for us to focus on protecting the latest endangered animal instead of dealing with more controversial issues such as, “the toxic waste exposure to the ‘unnatural’ urban and agricultural sites” because the solutions to toxic waste may more difficult to grapple with. Cronon is correct in that if we do not pay more attention to the environmental issues at home, “then too many other corners of the earth become less than natural and too many other people become less than human, thereby giving us permission not to care much about their fate” (85). 

By examining and processing our urban world, not only can we work toward confronting some of the environmental issues at hand, but as Cronon explains we can also experience nature without going “over there.” Before I signed up for this class, I never really tried to define nature; I just thought that it was anything nonhuman and not man made. When I heard birds chirping on my balcony, or if I saw my dog running outside chasing a squirrel, I considered it apart of nature. I Never thought of nature as something far removed from me, I only thought that there was less of it my daily life. I also don’t think it is very realistic to preserve nature in its “purest form” because that would mean we couldn’t be apart of it. What we need to do is figure out how we can live with nature in a way that is environmentally responsible. No matter what we do, we will always have some kind of impact on the natural world. Regardless of how much we try to protect nature, it will always be affected by us. The truth is, we can’t just stop progressing as a society for the sake of nature, instead we should take Cronon’s advice and “set responsible limits to human mastery” (87). Now, we just need to figure out what those limits are...

Reflections on William Cronon's "The Trouble with Wilderness: or,Getting Back to the Wrong Nature"

   William Cronon’s, “The Trouble with Wilderness: or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” is the most impressive theoretical reading assignment to date, as deftly unpacked is society’s evolving meaning of the word “wilderness” to reveal a tangled web of contradictions that Cronon argues if not somehow reconciled will lead to the failure of the environmentalist movement. In an eye-opening introduction Cronon explains why there has never in fact been a wilderness to speak of in human history––at least, not if what we mean by the wilderness is a place standing wholly apart from civilization in some ineffable way. Yes, there have been (and surprisingly) still are places on earth untouched by human contact. But the brilliance of the article is how Cronon shows that despite this fact, inextricably there always is an all-to-human element to its significance that demands critical attention: 

Far from being the one place on earth that stands apart from humanity, [the wilderness] is quite profoundly a human creation––indeed, the creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human history. It is not a pristine sanctuary where the last remnant of an untouched, endangered, but sill transcendent nature can for at least a little while longer be encountered without the contaminating taint of civilization. Instead, it is a product of that civilization, and could hardly be contaminated by the very stuff of which it is made. (Cronon 69, italics mine)

Now, upon first reading the above, I found myself anticipating a sweeping post-structuralist claim about the material world, that is, that Cronon would argue that literally the existence of everything depends on language, a la Barthes, including the wilderness itself. However, much to my relief, Cronon is in fact not arguing from this perspective. What he very much is referring to is the concept of the wilderness. And of course, he is right. Any concept is inevitably the product of the human mind, and therefore has much about it that has a basis in language. His deeper point, then, is that often people, including earnest ecologists and environmentalists, unknowingly conflate the biological reality we know as the wilderness, with a problematic understanding of the concept of the wilderness itself, leading to a profound misunderstanding about how the two are distinct and should remain so. 

What I particularly appreciated about the reading is Cronon’s destabilizing of the meaning of the wilderness by offering an informative and revealing historical analysis of the word's changing denotation, but especially its varying connotations across cultures. A great deal of the meaning of the wilderness, in fact, is taken for granted. For instance, most famously, the Romantic writers of the nineteenth century give a particularly high importance to the respect and sanctity of the natural world, as indicated in their preoccupation with the doctrine of the sublime, which argues there are certain locations in nature or features of the environment that are capable of bringing one into contact with the divine. Whether it be Wordsworth’s Prelude or later John Muir’s raptures over the beauties of the Sierras, the Romantic writers’ ideology represents a positive attitude toward the environment that continues to be influential. 

Cronon sets the stage early of his discussion of the Romantic writers by explaining how early in European history, the physical wilderness had been perceived as a place of darkness, danger, and corruption, that one would be wise to avoid. Religion was particularly significant in shaping the discourses about the natural world. The King James Bible is replete with pejorative references to nature, profoundly impacting the ideologies of the era’s Christian communities: 

The wilderness was where Moses had wandered with his people for forty years, and where they had nearly abandoned their God to worship a golden idol. For Pharaoh will say of the Children of Israel,” we read in Exodus, “They are entangled in the land, the wilderness hath shut them in.” The wilderness was where Christ had struggled with the devil and endured his temptations: “And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness. And he was there in the wilderness for forty days tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him.” (Cronon 70-71)

As Cronon makes clear, for the Romantic meaning of the concept of the wilderness to be adequately understood, there needs be a familiarity first with the word's historical, pre-nineteenth century context. What Cronon does with great skill is exploit the word's semantic mutability to warn of society's remaining ignorant to the fact that a problematic ideology belonging to one group or another is often substituted for a truer understanding of both the concept of and the material reality that defines the wilderness. Precisely because Cronon, as most of us do, wants both himself and his descendants to live in a world that is unimpaired by pollution, he does not hesitate to identify the most contradictory and just plain nonsensical beliefs about the wilderness that pervade both the ecological and environmental discourse communities. The best example is his deconstruction of the paradox lying at the heart of what is known as the "Deep Ecology" movement, which essentially argues that nature’s salvation depends on what amounts to human kind’s exit from the planet. Or, to sum it up in Cronon’s words: “[I]f nature dies because we enter it, then the only way to save nature is to kill ourselves” (Cronon 83). Expressing a sentiment that many people can sympathize with, including those who would consider themselves to be fervent advocates for the environment, Cronon calls the Deep Ecologist position here an “absurdity,” arguing that any proposition that would essentially have all of humankind commit suicide is, to say in the least, unlikely to attract very many followers or be helpful in environmental discourses. 

As a reader, what I most took away from Cronon’s article was how important it is to be aware of the shifting semantic changes that take place in our language when we attempt to make profound decisions about our collective treatment of the environment. Few if any would argue for the goodness of a polluted, filthy planet. Such a view, to the extent there may actually be one, is not worth taking seriously. One can also be certain that virtually nobody would be anxious to participate in a global suicide either as a way to solve our problems. Cronon seems to want to appropriate sentiments such as these into productive starting points from which to proceed in our professional and public discourses. Lastly, Cronon's penetrating analysis of the various parties belonging to the environmentalist movement, specifically their peculiar and often contradictory definitions of “the wilderness," represents what seems to me to be just the kind of clear-minded thinking that the environmentalist movement requires to win the hearts—and perhaps more importantly the minds—of those like myself who are only beginning to familiarize themselves with the movement's ideologies.

Reflecting on “The Trouble With the Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature”

            Cronon goes to great lengths in questioning Thoreau’s famous notion that “In wildness is the preservation of the World” (69). Cronon’s argument is summed up well when he states, “as we gaze into the mirror [nature] holds up for us, we too easily imagine that what we behold is Nature when in fact we see the reflection of our own unexamined longings and desires” (70). The concept of the wilderness, for Cronon, is ultimately defined and instituted by human beings. It seems Cronon points to the tendencies many individuals have to simultaneously exoticize and classify the natural world. It is indeed laughable to think that the collection of gentle streams and calming trees, otherwise known as protected natural spaces today, were the vast, desolate, and creepy territories of earlier periods.

Yet it seems Cronon is unduly harsh in arguing “[nature is] entirely a creation of the culture it holds dear, a product of the very history it seeks to deny” (79). Undoubtedly, the few open spaces we have carved out in the US would certainly suggest the natural environment is a creation of the state. But this assumes that the natural world may only be appreciated within the confines of designated grounds or the places people identify as exotic. It seems Cronon takes a huge leap in suggesting that this desire to classify nature is a means to deny our history of modernization simply because the word deny implies an active and conscious refusal to believe or recognize. In a certain sense, a denial might encompass a complete neglect and lack of concern for the wilderness after a weekend jaunt to the woods. It seems absurd to assume that enjoying the benefits of an undeveloped area is tantamount to an escape from all of humanity that we might never remember or return. I would imagine, and at least hope, that forests and protected lands remain preserved because the population seeks to maintain part of their past rather than for purposes of escape or denial.

            Cronon’s argument changes slightly near his conclusion and he seems to recant his original statements regarding the denial of nature by society. His argument ultimately culminates with the idea that when society regards nature with a certain distance, perhaps embodied in the notion of the Other, there is a loss of appreciation or perhaps an undue exoticism taking place in our perception of nature (84). He argues nature can be experienced in the subtly of weeds growing out of miles of concrete or a few trees amongst a cluster of buildings. Although he takes a different angle on the same argument, his indictment of society on the whole is misplaced. The early developments in business and industry forced the government and fledging forest service to respond by both demarcating and commoditizing natural spaces that demanded preservation. It seems practically impossible to avoid the commoditized aspects of nature in society, but especially considering the motto of the National Forest Service: “Land of Many Uses.” The kneejerk reaction of government to protect natural spaces, in light of societal developments that continue to blight the environment, seems justified and necessary for their time and the current day. In so doing, it is plausible to suggest that nature has been marginalized or othered, but it seems illogical to place blame upon those who might want to experience wooded acres and vast hills rather than a few weeds emerging from a seldom-used concrete path.     

Cronon’s Conundrum

Our concept of wilderness is not natural because it presumes a “virginity,” an untouched quality that precludes Native Americans and which assumes that wherever man isn’t, nature is.  How homocentric!  If man has a religious or near-religious experience in the nature encounter, is his own nature as city-dweller wholly divorced from any personal redemptive qualities?  In other words, cannot man summon a sense of humility for his fellow beings without running to the wilderness and drinking in the sublimity?  Cronon grounds his discussion of wilderness in Scripture, wherein the wanderings of the ancient Israelites and the temptation of Christ occur in desert-like surroundings, not woods, teeming with life.  This is an important distinction.  Wilderness up to the late eighteenth century had been considered apart from creation and abysmal.  The use, then, of the term “wilderness” in the context of the nature encounter represented by the mid-nineteenth century a radical co-opting of religion to approximate, ironically enough, religious experience.

As the frontier became increasingly settled, the myth of wilderness as bestower of “rugged individualism” rose in prominence and embellished—burnished even—the extant American mythos as a land of opportunity for those willing to rise to the occasion.  Wordsworth’s sublimity less than fifty years on was supplanted by the economic opportunity immanent in farming, ranching, and owning large swaths of “wilderness.”  The secularization of the scriptural ideal of wilderness saw the transformation from wilderness as the place where God met the pilgrim on his spiritual journey to the place where God is made fully manifest in the life of the blessed citizen.  For those with money who could travel, going to the wilderness was a luxury, the benefits of which could not be experienced, understood, and enjoyed by the lower classes.  Analogously, for those with money, buying wilderness for the purpose of economic benefit was a privilege equally not to be enjoyed by the lower classes.

Wilderness is a myth because we assume that what isn’t owned by the federal government, a state, or a private individual is untouched.  This fallacy allows us to pursue a course of unimpeded annexation, whereby lands that are already owned or falling into ownership are purposed, re-purposed, and plundered yet again beyond all possibility of sustainability.  I prefer Cronon’s essay because it sticks a finger in the eye of boutique environmentalism, the idea that only by driving hundreds of miles out of the way—to Joshua Tree for instance—can the city-dweller wake up to his God-given, innate qualities of humility and start treating his fellow beings with more respect and compassion.  What hogwash.  Why do I need to go the forest to have a near-religious experience when we have religion available in the sunset at Venice Beach or the sunrise from my apartment stoop?

Why has a near-religious experience supplanted a religious one?  I don’t understand this.  As someone who is religious, I can’t wrap my head around the fact that a devolved form of Wordsworth’s sublimity is environmentalist grandeur run amok.

Wilderness, Sacrality, Nationalism

Wilderness, Sacrality, Nationalism

            In “The Trouble with Wilderness,” William Cronon examines the complex nexus of values and beliefs centered on the concept of wilderness in the United States.  Rather than a pure, natural given, the wilderness is an “unntural” cultural creation.   In the idea of wilderness are intertwined two American obsessions: religion and nationalism.  The signifiers of these cultural categories are not always obviously apparent, as they undergo revalutation and take on disguises.

            Cronon organizes his analysis by exploring the influence of the concepts of the sublime and the fontier on the creation of “wilderness.”  We find religion interacting with both these concepts while nationalism primarily relates to the second.  Previous to the reinterpretation of the sublime in the Romantic period, wilderness generally had negative connotations.  It caused one to feel terror or “bewilderment.” In antiquity, the wilderness was also a place of temptation and spiritual purification.  This trandformative possibility of the wilderness was valued and developed so that by the late 18^th century the wilderness was where one could encounter the divine.  In the United States, due to the influence of writers like Muir, the transformation of wilderness was complete: “Satan’s home had become God’s own temple” (72).  Wild nature became sacred.

            Related to this revaluation, the wilderness also became a place where one could return to certain core human experiences.  In the wilderness, human beings experienced some primitive essence that had been covered over by corrupting and artificial layers of “civilization.”  This primitivism was given a nationalist tinge by writers like Frederick Jackson Turner, who saw American democracy emerging from the encounter bewteen primitive human nature and the wilderness.  This American democratic spirit could be reinvigorated by returning to the wilderness.  The wilderness must be protected because it is “the last bastion of rugged individualism,” which can ensure the renewal of an essential Americanness (77).  Wilderness as frontier also connotes a place of authenticity.  The wilderness is the irreducible “real” – the place where we can experience the “truth” of the world and ourselves.  The real and the authentic, according to historian of religions Mircea Eliade, are preeminently qualities of the sacred.  Thus, as Cronon observes, modern environmentalism is replete with “quasi-relgious values” founded upon such a conception of the wilderness (80).  The assumption of wilderness as sacred and authentic represents a structure of belief homologous to what is usually undertood by the word “religious.”

            Within this complex of “religious” belief and national identity, certain problems and contradictions emerge.  One of these involves class.  The wilderness as an artificial place of authenticity and Americianness can only be enjoyed and benefited from by the middle and upper classes who have the money and leisure to travel.  It is a place of recreation and of internal renewal separate from the urban centers where these visitors live and work.  The wilderness allows them to purify themselves of the corruption of a greedy, ugly, industrial-capitalist world, thus absolving them of any complicity in its injustices.  Poet and farmer Wendell Berry has often drawn attention to the need to live responsibly in a place where we both make a home and work.  When we preserve the wilderness because we expect it to purify us of our corruption and sins, we accept more easily the faults of the “profane” world we inhabit.  This mentality can tacitly accept political and economic structures that cause injustice and destruction, thus devaluing most of the earth and many of our fellow human beings.