chcreta – American Environments to 1893

May 4, 2014

My Interpretation of Environmental History and Nature

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Looking back on this past semester, I realize how little I knew about environmental history before I began this class. I have never been to a state park, and I only went on my first hike, to the top of “Arthur’s Seat,” when I was abroad. I had always thought of the definition of “natural” as something untouched by mankind, mysterious in its sheer expanse, and beautiful. I looked at nature the way Henry David Thoreau viewed nature, as something mystifying and necessary:

We need the tonic of wilderness… at the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature. (From Walden: Or, Life In the Woods)

This class and the works that we have read, however, have completely changed my perspective on how I view nature and the wilderness. Nature does not encompass solely the peaceful and tranquil sceneries I once associated with the term, but now I include devastating tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes, storms, and floods as natural. To me now, nature includes things not touched and touched by man, because we as humans are as much a part of this natural ecosystem as any other animal. We interact with our environment, affect it, change it, help it, and hurt it, just as other creatures of this world. The environment influences us in the same ways. Our interaction with nature often impacts our decisions, our lifestyles, and our future. Whether the environment dictates military strategy of the Civil War or makes scholars wonder why Los Angeles was placed in a danger zone, mankind’s balance with nature tips back and forth throughout time. This tipping of the scale is certainly natural.

But to what extent? Will there ever be a point where we as humans will tip the scale too far in our direction and forever upset the world as we know it? Will there be a point at which we cannot go back, when nature is forever affected without the capability to recover? These questions are a few that environmental historians study as well as wonder if, perhaps, we have already crossed over the point of no return. Mike Davis believes there is no helping Los Angeles from disaster. William Cronon studies the rise of Chicago as a metropolis and its positive contribution to our American way of life.

American capitalism and market economy contributes to our destruction of our wilderness, yet also contributes to our survival. The line remains blurry between protecting our environment and protecting our American values and way of life. Justin’s comment, that “the environment has the potential to destroy humans as well,” resonates with me because many of the conversations we hear are one sided, placing mankind as the “evil” destroying “good” nature. This course has taught me that there is no duality when it comes to environmental history. Historians analyze this gray area and determine at what points in history men or nature have tipped the scale. I will forever look at nature and study environmental history with a more encompassing and expansive definition while trying to answer who the actors at play are and who appears to be at “fault.” This course has taught me that the answer to that question might not ever be solved, but that environmental history can help us make better and more intelligent decisions about how we interact with the world around us.

April 28, 2014

Ecology of Fear: Human Agency and Nature Result in A Wave of Fear and Anxiety

Environmental histories seem to stress the relationship between human actions and their impact on the environment. Often, the relationship involves human exploitation of nature and the consequences that arise.

Mike Davis’s work is no different. His Ecology of Fear presents a similar discussion on human agency in nature. Davis opens his book with a quote from the Los Angeles Times that hints at the hope awarded to the city of Los Angeles in 1934: “No place on Earth offers greater security to life and greater freedom from natural disasters than Southern California.” The first six chapters of this book demonstrate only irony associated with this statement. Davis describes the natural disasters that hit southern California today and finds roots in past human agency that caused the current catastrophes. Los Angeles has such a varied plant life, landscape, and weather, and human settlement and agency combined with this diversity impacted the city greatly. While human actors play a large role in this narrative, natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and fire wreak havoc on LA. To recover from the disasters, money must be spent to rebuild the destroyed buildings impacted by disaster. A circle of chaos emerges, where money is spent to keep fixing disaster-stricken Los Angeles while the problems that cause the disasters never get fixed. Take, for example, the “total fife suppression” caused by placing fuel stockpiles near homes and allowing dry winds to wreak havoc on houses (101).

Davis’ central claim is that the citizens of Los Angeles have imagined disasters through a lens of fear and misunderstanding, resulting in a society that is catastrophically and consistently out of balance with the environment. He argues that, for a time, Los Angeles was not affected by some of the disasters like other places. This changed, however. In the first chapter, he argues that disaster in Los Angeles will result in “higher body counts and greater distress” in the future” (55).

The second chapter deals with the “selfish, profit-driven” attitudes that took over southern California, despite the people that warned against doom. Chapter three connects wildfires in Malibu with urban tenement houses that burned to the ground and received little media attention compared to the upscale city. He essentially connects environmental disasters with social inequalities. Chapter four focuses on tornadoes and the secretiveness of their existence, although they experience tornadoes at a rate twice as high as Oklahoma City. In chapter five, he discusses a growing fear of mountain lions and other animals as urban sprawl occurred and mankind moved in on the wilderness. In Chapter six, he discusses the “disaster genre” in cinema and literature. Specifically he talks about the Asian hordes, aliens, monsters, bombs, cults, pollution, gangs, terrorism, floods, riots, volcanoes, sandstorms, mudslides, and plagues that frequently attack Los Angeles, and how this pop-culture reflects racial anxieties.

Davis finishes up his work with a discussion on how Los Angeles will eventually become an urban city of homeless people, violence, blue-collar crime suburb, affluent gated communities, and prisons surrounding the outskirts. He bases his beliefs on the current situation in LA that involves southern Californians giving up civil liberties to curb social fears and keep them at bay. He updates Ernest W. Burgess’ urban zone diagram from the 1920s, building on the social hierarchy of the city and the zones they occupy.

His work is left wing and political while also adding an interesting analysis of human nature as a whole. He appears to place more emphasis on mankind as the main actor and decision maker in a place where disaster and catastrophe are a normal occurrence in the environment. It is where humans decide to live, what they decide to do, that causes issues.

Davis does a nice job of creating a direct relationship between man and nature. One seems to directly affect the other. Humans impact their environment in a negative way through their market-driven, individualistic attitudes. The environment wreaks havoc on society, creating fear and paranoia that also reflects social attitudes of the times. Davis sums it up referencing Henry David Thoreau’s work by calling Los Angeles “Walden Pond on LSD.” (14) Mother Nature should not be blamed for disaster, he says. Instead, wonder why humans decide to live in the path of disaster and what this can tell us about societal values and concerns. He decides to make nature an important actor in his work, but emphasizes that humans are the bigger actors at play here with their societal anxieties and public policy. Society can be just as chaotic as nature.

April 27, 2014

The Role of Nature and Human Agency in American History

The Prologue of Ted Steinberg’s Down to Earth: Nature’s Role in American History ends with a statement that refers to a discussion consistently brought up in class: “Suddenly the earth itself becomes an actor, a force to be reckoned with, instead of a simple line drawing inside a book’s cover.” (7) In his book, Steinberg makes nature a significant player in America’s history since the beginning. Justin makes an interesting point that “history cannot be told without all the key players, and these key players do not always involve animate actors.” This seems to be one of Steinberg’s main points in his work. Working forward from Pangaea, Steinberg argues that Americans ultimately shaped their environments through the commodification of nature. In this American history textbook, Steinberg describes the settlement of the country, the surveying of the land, and the rise of commercialism to depict both the implications of human action and natural phenomenon on American history.

Something I found particularly interesting about Steinberg’s book is that he makes some interesting points about Native Americans and their relationship with nature. He makes a comment that early in American history, Indians were intimately aware of the environment around them and their rituals reflected their dependence on nature. Steinberg states, “they farmed the soil, hunted game, set fires, and gathered berries and nuts, engaging in a spiritually rich relationship with the land, while shaping it to meet the needs of everyday survival” (11). This resourceful and spiritual relationship with nature describes the kind of Indian connection with the environment I am used to reading in typical history textbooks. Steinberg acknowledges this unique Native American connection with nature, but also argues that they eventually began to see nature as a commodity as they became more and more influenced by American habits and presence. For example, the Cheyennes began to acquire more horses than needed. Indians, Steinberg argues, contributed to their own demise by keeping tens of thousands of horses, more than the land could support. (123) He therefore argues that a combination of human agency and environmental factors played a role in the demise of peoples and in the annihilation of space as humans began to use nature in ways beyond those needs required for survival.

Steinberg doesn’t simply blame human agency for the use and overuse of resources and the exploitation of land. Steinberg emphasizes that nature played a huge role in the development of American history. His statement at the end of Chapter 8 wraps up this main argument: “plants and animals are not merely a backdrop of history. They are living things that have needs that make demands on the land. Sometimes the land lives up to the task, and sometimes, because of a variety of factors both human and nonhuman, those needs outstrip the ability of the environment to provide.” (123) His interesting textbook on American environmental history not only contributes to some of our main discussions on actors, Native Americans, and the role of human agency, but also sheds new light and perspective on our conversations.

April 14, 2014

Crimes Against Nature: Conceptions of Nature and Morality

Karl Jacoby, in his Crimes Against Nature, discusses the land set-aside during the conservation movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as the “the law and its antithesis-lawlessness” (2). I found it interesting that the conservation movement began when American lawmakers redefined what was considered legitimate uses of the environment. The philosophies that shaped these lawmakers and their decisions trickled down to the ordinary folk and their interactions with the environment therefore changed. Jacoby refers to the moral universe that shaped the local transgression of conservation laws that gives historians a look into the beliefs and traditions of the people as “moral ecology” (3). Poaching, arson, and squatting take center-stage in Jacoby’s work on conceptions of nature and environmental crimes.

Jacoby argues that there is more to the traditional story about the elite imposing their ideas about nature on rural places and rural folk. The country folk did not ignorantly break the laws, but actually resisted conservation programs that threatened livelihoods and “fashioned a variety of arrangements designed to safeguard the ecological basis of their way of life” (193). Studying the formation of the Adirondack Park by New York State, the federal government’s attempts to manage Yellowstone National Park, and the Grand Canyon conservation plans, Jacoby shows how these actions impacted the resident peoples. With the involvement of the military, conservation schemes affected those living in and using the parks, such as those who desired to use the public land for hunting. Conservationists even opposed the supposed American rights to take timber, water, and minerals from the preserved lands. He points out that sometimes, “Americans have often pursued environmental quality at the expense of social justice” (198). In this way, the conservation movement challenged American republicanism and democracy, interfering with traditional conceptions of American rights and living.

An interesting myth that Jacoby also challenges is the myth that conservationists protected unchanging wilderness, when, in fact, conservationism transformed the countryside itself. Fire, hunting laws, and restocking wildlife helped transform the country in this way. With the transformation of nature, the Yellowstone Act of 1872, and the American obsession with claiming property, I agree with Anthony’s statement that these actions “reflect our obsession with fencing off and owning property and reflects our abuse of the world ‘natural.” Yellowstone Park, protected by conservationists, ironically prevented people from performing previously conceived “natural” actions. This irony echoes the discussion we often have in class: whether or not the actions of mankind can be considered natural or not. How do lawmakers and conservationists decide what is natural on one side of the fence when that action can occur without consequence on the other side? I find this absurd. Jacoby’s work made me ponder what is considered a “crime” and how “crime” is truly a man-made concept, easily impacted by lawmakers and evolving ideas about morality and the environment.

March 30, 2014

The Domination and Geography of Capital in the Industrialization of Chicago

William Cronon, in Parts II and III of Nature’s Metropolis, discusses the movement of natural materials to market and the movement of capital, products, and people within the context of industrializing Chicago. Grain, lumber, and meat become major natural materials to pass through Chicago. Cronon writes about the importance of farmers to Chicago and that without the farmers, there would be no city. With the help of the railroads, farmers transported and provided efficient access to new areas. The creation of the elevator caused technology to replace individual workers. With these railroads and new technology, access to wood became easier and more expansive. People began to look towards Chicago for lumber. Essentially, nature was transferred to capital. And, more importantly, not “wasting” land, meat, or capital was priority. This idea of the movement of natural materials emphasizes one of Cronon’s main theses in his work on the rise of Chicago: The geography of capital was as important as the geography of nature.

Cronon also discusses the importance of Chicago as a “Gateway City.” Not only was it a gateway city for the West, but also for the eastern cities attempting to benefit from the commodities and flow of exchange from the West. Because of Chicago’s exchange between what Cronon refers to as “first” and “second” nature, “the commodities that flowed across the grasslands and forests of the Great West to reach Chicago did so within an elaborate human network that was at least as important as nature in shaping the region.” (264) Cronon also argues that Chicago as a new metropolis revealed the importance of railroads, elevators, and refrigerator cars to the West (265). Although competing with surrounding cities like St. Louis, Chicago flourished as the gateway between the Northern/European capitalist economy and the colonizing West. (295) Mail-order catalogs in 1872 allowed for the technological combinations of “railroads, urban manufacturing, wholesaling, improved postal service, and advertising” to be delivered anywhere. (333) With Chicago’s rise as a metropolis, Cronon argues, the geography of capital was about connecting people to make new markets and remake old landscapes and therefore “capital produced a landscape of obscured connections.” (340)

In the Epilogue, Cronon argues that Chicago caused its own demise as a metropolis in some ways. For example, opening a market in the region encouraged human migration, environmental changes, and economic developments that gave rise to other great cities, diminishing its competitiveness. Reading about Chicago and its rise as a great city dependent on the exchange between nature and capital made me think about our discussions of nature and changing landscapes. I am solidified even more in my opinion that humans allow capital to rule their lives and that sometimes the environment is affected by such decisions completely dependent on attempting to gain as much capital as possible from the endeavor. This reminds me of a comment Justin made last week about how “industrialization consumes American lives.” “Wasting” capital appeared to be more important than “wasting” nature, such as the white pine, though they were so intertwined in the development of the industrializing city. Eventually, however, the pursuit of capital experienced its limits and Chicago, as a gateway city, no longer fulfilled that status. I agree with Cronon’s view that we fool ourselves when we think of choosing between the city and the country and that we often forget how they fully shape each other. We must understand both the city and the country to realize they are one and we as humans are a part of one entity.

March 16, 2014

War Upon the Land and The Assumption that Man Can Control Nature

Nineteenth century Americans assumed that they could take control of nature and succeed in achieving their goals. In War Upon the Land, Lisa Brady confronted this American assumption by studying the ways in which the Union military attempted to play around with natural forces in order to defeat the Confederates in the Civil War. What amounted in Union attempts, however, was often pure hubris and failure to control nature. Brady provides the reader with the example of Vicksburg, where Union soldiers intended to tunnel under it, control the Mississippi river, and cause its isolation for Confederate destruction. The Union soldiers did in fact take the stronghold, but by fighting a gruesome battle and not by controlling nature. Their attempt to, what Brady calls, “neutralize nature,” did not succeed in this example. (35)

This assumption that man could control nature is tied to another idea that Brady discusses in her work. In her introduction, Brady clarifies that to “improve” nature, meant essentially to “civilize.” (11) This idea echoes our past discussions in class about the relationship between Americans and the wilderness. It also reminds me of Richard Slotkin’s arguments about white supremacy, the belief that natives symbolized an embodiment of the malevolent force of nature, and that the white man could bring nature under his control. Like our conversations about Native Americans and the wilderness and white Americans’ perception of both, white Northern Americans in the Civil War attributed the institution of slavery to something uncivilized and wild. I found her argument about white Northerners looking down upon southerners as uncivilized folk and using that as justification for fighting such a bloody war to prove interesting. Just like Americans must conquer and civilize the wilderness, the North must conquer and civilize the South by demolishing its abhorrent institution of slavery.

Destroying the South’s backbone of life and commerce, essentially, led to the Confederate loss and, like Emily stated, ensured that the South could not return to its previous state before the war (135). Brady referred to it as destroying the “agroecological foundations” of the South. (23) When supplies had to be left behind, the military was forced to live off the land, further stripping the Confederates of their resources. Nature seemed to be working against the Union military in their attempts to starve and destroy the southern way of life. Mosquitoes carrying diseases wreaked havoc on Union soldiers and rivers flooded impeding Northern movement. It was as if nature was fighting back against an arrogant species that believed nature was easily and justifiably conquerable. I found Brady’s work to be an interesting and insightful take on the destruction of Sherman and the Shenandoah and Mississippi River campaigns. I thought her work was essentially an argument of how nature shaped human decisions and how those decisions greatly impacted the outcome of the war.

March 9, 2014

The Fatal Environment: White Supremacy and Myth

Myth and history are not mutually exclusive. Richard Slotkin provides his own definition of myth in The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890. “Myths are stories, drawn from history, that have acquired through usage over many generations a symbolizing function that is central to the cultural functioning of the society that produces them,” writes Slotkin. (16) His work rests on the foundation that myth is an essential part of history, shaping, influencing, and molding a culture’s perception of its own history and past. Slotkin’s main thesis revolves around the idea that the glorified myth of the frontier on the eve of the industrial age was in fact a warped vision of the true history of the frontier.

I almost found Slotkin’s argument, though believable, to be repetitive. He argues that the history of the frontier was not a completely romanticized dream, but a story about white supremacy and racial superiority. The doctrine adopted to white man’s treatment of the West revolved around converting savages and suppressing their otherness. Frontier ideology, epitomized by James Fenimore Cooper, “centered on the representation of the history of American development as the confrontation between warring races, Indian and white.” (100) Slotkin then goes on to explain, “In the triumph of the white and the vanishing of the red, the progress of civilization is achieved, in both moral and material terms.” (100) White Americans viewed the conquering of the Indian in the West as an ultimate conquer over nature, for Americans regarded the Indians as an integral part of nature and the wilderness itself. I agree with Ian that “in breaking down Slotkin’s definition, we can see his position in that humanity does in fact exist in nature, as human heroics are allowed to tread there.” In class, we often discuss the possibility that mankind and their workings are as much a part of nature as any other animal. Looking through a twenty-first century lens, I could find support in Slotkin’s work that man is in fact a part of nature and the wilderness. Looking through a nineteenth century looking-glass, however, it might have been hard to consider Native American Indians as “mankind” when they were so often looked upon as savages.

Slotkin’s discussion on the conquering of nature reminds me of different aspects of human nature. Men are afraid of defeat, afraid of destruction. When white Americans sought a controlled nature and suppression of the Indian race, it was due to their fear of the “Custer Complex.” This complex was based off of the drive to conquer men and nature at any cost. Americans feared a defeat similar to the defeat of General George Custer by the Sioux. They also used Custer’s defeat as justification to rid of the Indian population to “protect or avenge the imperiled female.” (377) Slotkin argues that Custer’s defeat became a prominent legend of American West mythology. (14) Not only did the loss become a part of American myth and legend, but also placed itself within a conversation of gender and racial discrimination. Slotkin’s literary and historical approach in his work present interesting arguments in a somewhat unusual way, but his thesis does not extensively add to a new historical argument about white supremacy and oppression.

February 23, 2014

Who are the actors in The Destruction of the Bison?

When approaching the topic of the decimation of the bison, who are the primary actors? In class, we always discuss who the players are in the environmental histories we read. According to Andrew C. Isenberg in The Destruction of the Bison, more than one actor played a role in facilitating the death of the bison from the western plains from 1750-1920. Isenberg argues that the actions of mankind in the West, although often considered the sole cause, were not the only causes for the demise of the bison. Isenberg instead argues that the volatility and instability of the environment as well as the invasion of the Euroamericans and activities of the nomadic Plains Indians all contributed to the overhunting of one of the West’s most symbolic creatures.

Drought and the natural environment of the Plains contributed to the changing population of the bison. Fires, drowning, wolves, and competition from other grazers also effected the bison depending heavily on the grasslands of the Plains. As a result, certain periods of time allowed for an imbalance between the mortality of bison and their natural increase, therefore causing even more destruction when hunting entered the picture. Isenberg ultimately rejects the assumption that “nature is essentially stable and orderly.” (11) Instead, he asserts, “The western plains… were prone to frequent and pronounced economic instability.” (11). It appears that the author of this environmental history awards mankind some slack despite the harsh reputation humans get when it comes to negatively impacting the environment.

Using traveler journals, precipitation records, government documents, and Indian accounts, Isenberg attempts to place mankind within a natural cycle of environmental and natural occurrences. My younger years of schooling included lessons on how the white man invaded the Plains and hunted the bison to extinction for economic exploitation and for sport. I learned that the white man ultimately destroyed the lifestyles of the dependent Plains Indians in the surrounding area. Never before have I read a history that placed some of the blame on the Native Americans themselves. Isenberg does, however, acknowledge the destruction of the western native societies along with the bison, “The trade in bison robes was destructive both to the herds and to the nomadic societies.” (107)

Isenberg argues that the culture of the nomadic Plains Indians, then introduced to the horse and able to expand their distance and food options, significantly effected the bison as well as the supported the economic desires of the Indians. Euroamericans, on the other hand, sought bison herds for their fur. The consumerism and economic exploits of the Euroamericans combined with the already high dependence of Plains Indians on bison as a main food source contributed to the bison’s demise.

After reading Isenberg’s work and his inclusiveness of the environment in his discussion, I agree with Sean’s statement: “human’s influence on the harming of natural environments is in itself natural, and a consequence of the advancement of human societies.” I believe that mankind interacts with the environment similarly to other animals when they extract from the environment to survive. However, I think mankind can learn from the destruction of the bison. There exists a certain balance that must be maintained between utilizing the availability of resources for practical and economic reasons and their general availability and actual population. Not only must we remain conscious of this balance to ensure the protection of our environment, but also to ensure the survival of the human race.

February 16, 2014

The Refinement of America: A Look into Human Nature and Tradition

It is within human nature to value tradition. Richard L. Bushman, in his The Refinement of America: Persons, Houses, Cities, analyzes this natural code of behavior by extensively analyzing American gentility and habits in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Bushman argues that the refinement of America ultimately began around 1690. He argues that Americans carried across the sea a desire for gentility and refinement that dated back to the Renaissance. Continuing into the eighteenth century, Americans began to selectively emulate upper class England and seek architectural and material luxuries. It is interesting to read these particular arguments because they are applicable to my thesis on music of the American Revolutionary era: Americans knowingly borrowed traditional English tunes and applied their own lyrics to use as parodies of well-known Old World music. Reading Bushman’s theories on traditional continuity only helped solidify one of my arguments that members of colonial society sought to emulate English traditions to serve their own purposes of distinguishing class and instituting themselves as models of cultural significance.

That being said, the aspects of culture and society that Americans chose to imitate proved ridiculous at times. I agree with Ian and his comment about the ridiculousness of etiquette books, that “codified polite society” by giving specific instructions on aspects of personal expression (38). The illustrations of children provided on page 294 depicting youngsters with high foreheads, tiny feet, and curls are anything but aesthetically pleasing. The anecdote Bushman provides related to Charles Ridgelys’ letter is one example of such absurdity. Writing every letter with “Honored Sir” and ending with “I am, Honored Sir, your ever Dutiful & loving son, Chas. Greenberry Ridgeley” appears tedious and pretentious from a twenty-first century concept of correspondence (10). Then again, I do often use sarcasm and formality in my letters and I do own a copy of Singing: For Dummies.

Bushman writes, “without knowing where precisely, they believed in a superior life somewhere and aspired to emulate that existence”, and his comment only hints at irony regarding republican ideals and equality (37). With Revolutionary concepts against aristocracy and English “superiority” and our Constitution’s rejection of nobility, it is interesting to see such emulation and imitation taking hold. I do, however, agree with his argument that the process of refinement was somewhat democratic and therefore republican in nature. Making luxury and refinement available to the masses and blurring clear class divisions in fact made the process democratic and equalizing in some aspects.

I enjoyed reading Bushman’s analysis of seventeenth and eighteenth century culture and its applicability to material objects, households, and aesthetics. I found little in his work, however, to apply to nature or to the environment. His work was more of a social and cultural history from a time period I enjoy studying. I think his arguments are sound and his work is as an interesting study of human nature and its interactions with culture.

January 27, 2014

The Wilderness: Untamed and Forever Beautiful

“Wilderness,” to me, describes a vast amount of land and resources essentially lacking any human involvement and intervention. In his Walking (1862), Henry David Thoreau supports this simple definition by writing, “Life consists of wilderness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him” (39). Part One of The Great New Wilderness Debate, however, builds on my definition and expands upon it. “Wilderness” constitutes the many expansive aspects of nature, beautiful because it is untouched and not owned by mankind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson paints nature in a beautiful and serene light in his Nature (1836). He writes, “Nature never wears a mean appearance” (28). Emerson admits that we attribute this kind of poetical frame of mind when we think of nature and wilderness. There also exists this sense of innocence and “perpetual youth” associated with the woods and nature that few adults can see because they only maintain a superficial sight (29). Emerson continues to explain that not one man owns the wild. No one can own the landscape. According to Emerson, the wilderness belongs to God, we are but “part or particle of God” (29). Thoreau, on the other hand, writes that the wilderness should be utilized for public use, and cites the Indians and their ability to share nature amongst them to survive. After reading Emerson’s and Thoreau’s views on nature, I have come to the conclusion that wilderness belongs to no one and to everyone simultaneously, to be enjoyed by all.

In Our National Parks (1901), John Muir interestingly comments on nature’s ability to be forever beautiful. He writes that as long as nature’s landscapes remain wild, they can never be ugly. Muir underscores wilderness’ necessity to this world. His essay ultimately supports the maintenance of national parks, yet also emphasizes that a wilderness will always exist because man cannot change it enough to make it nonexistent. “[The mountains and canons] these must always be wild, for man can change them and mar them hardly more than can the butterflies that hover above them,” writes Muir (57). He also describes nature as a safe haven for man. Beautiful forests contain little dangers as compared to city homes.

Emerson, Thoreau, and Muir all agree that man should escape to the wilderness and appreciate its accessible and incomparable beauty. The other essays mention man’s detrimental treatment of nature, but these three authors focus mainly on nature’s charm and overall goodness. My definition of “natural” from last week has certainly evolved this week: “For something to be deemed truly ‘natural,’ its present and previous state must rely on its lack of human interference and intrusion.” This week, I add that the wilderness and nature are intertwined, that they are also fundamentally beautiful in every aspect because they are wild and that they are therefore essential to human existence and human solitude. Man and the wild must maintain a balance between manipulation and survival. The wild’s expansiveness appeals to the human heart’s desire to be free and untamed. We must walk through the wild woods and reflect upon our place in the colossal universe. The wilderness constitutes a much larger part of this world as compared to human beings, and will therefore continue to exist after we are gone. The “wilderness” will forever be alive.