Nature as a Counterpoint to Cronon

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In the introduction to Nature’s Metropolis, William Cronon paints a picture of his childhood and the opposition of rural and urban that he claims to falsely have considered to be polar opposites, unconnected and fundamentally opposing.  I connected strongly with his childhood view, having also felt a persistent pull towards the undeveloped since my own childhood. For myself, as for Cronon, nature was pure and innocent, and the city was sophisticated, modern, and morally ambiguous. In arguing the inexorable relationship between rural and urban, he discounts this view, adopting instead a combination of Von Thunen’s Central Place Theory and Fredrick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis.  While his argument is convincing, it is fundamentally Marxist.  For Cronon, commerce and economics drive development.  I take issue with this simplified view of society, questioning the existence of nature preserves and National Parks, entities devoted to pleasure and exploration, in a world driven by commerce.  I see this government imitative as proof that there are other forces at work in development.  However, it is even more strongly present in the private sphere-the quest for a rural getaway that has existed for as long as there have been densely populated areas in America, as exemplified in the construction of the Biltmore House by the Vanderbilt’s in the late 1800’s.  The forested mountains that we see from overlooks such as Caesar’s Head (a childhood favorite) result from more than government preservation.  As a whole, we seem to recognize the innate value in the natural, and it is evidenced in the forests that still clothe our mountains.  However, that value is far from commercial, and if economics drove all development, the mountains would have been developed long ago.  Therefore, I argue that the continued existence of large quantities of forestland in the American Southeast act as a counterpoint to Cronon’s assertion that economics are the fundamental driver of development.

I would like to add to Catherine’s point about the Davidson College Ecological Preserve. It is indeed second growth forest, and she questions how natural it is because of this.  However, if you take a look around at this new growth forest, you see so many other physical signs of human tampering.  You see the wide swath cleared last year for the gas lines, still bare from the destruction.  You see the abandoned house, a favorite of students for midnight jaunts.  You see the goats, an introduction into the Davidson woods, but their presence indicates an effort to correct another invasive species gone wild, Kudzu.  The list goes on, from the boathouse to the power line.  In this wild place, the wildest that Davidson has to offer, we are never far from man’s influence.  This raises the question, also raised by Cronon in his introduction, what is wilderness?  Does it exist in this modern age?  I don’t know the answer, but as a nature lover, I am glad that the question can still be asked today.