Wilderness, Continued...

Book Review continued from Part I: Reading List: Wilderness and the American Mind

Aldo Leopold's ideas of a 'land ethic' and 'ecological conscience' offered a touchstone for a new movement - giving birth to the idea of instilling Americans with a love and respect for their land. While mostly known for the amazing work 'A Sand County Almanac', it's interesting to see how Leopold came up through the ranks of the government system through US Forest Service in New Mexico and other locales. The ideas of working within the system (for the 'man' if you will) to expand the National Parks and Wilderness Area designations is novel. It was a struggle but eventually succeeded in developing an expanded and official role for wilderness protection. Leopold's influence expanded to others such as the pioneering planner Benton Mackaye whom among other victories was responsible for the Appalachian Trail.


:: image via Wikipedia

The dual ideas of planning and ecology definitely opened a new thought for looking at wilderness and it's benefits in new ways. "The science of ecology came of age during Leopold's lifetime. In rapid succession a series of breakthroughts revealed the way in which land and the life that shared it constituted a complex organism functioning through the interaction of its components... Ecology enabled him to concieve of nature as an intricate web of interdependent parts, a myriad of cogs and wheels each essention to the health operation of the whole." (p.195)

Others joined Leopold on this fight in the 20th Century, including Robert Marshall, Sigurd Olson, Howard Zahniser and notably, earth-day founder David Brower - along with a number of official organizations that continued and expanded the fight for wilderness across the country. While the New Deal worked for progress, proponents such as Marshall looked at the inevitable issues facing a wilderness ethic. Quoted in 1935, Marshall concluded: "What makes wilderness areas most susceptible to annihilation, is that the arguments in favor of roads are direct and concrete, while those against them are subtle and difficult to express." (p.204)

The Echo Park Dam became the new fight in the mid-1900s - centered around part of the Colorado River Storage Project which would dam multiple wilderness areas, including the Dinosaur National Monument, a significant area of fossil concentrations. This again became the touchstone of the movement, with references to Leopold. MacKaye referred "...to Leopold's notion that wild country provided 'an exhibit of normal ecologic process.' Dinosaur National Monument and other wildernesses... constitute 'a reservoir of store experiences in the ways of life before man.'"


:: Dinosaur National Monument - image via National Parks Traveler

The Echo Park Dam was deafeated, which was a new rallying call after the defeat at Hetch Hetchy earlier in the century, and language was added to preclude National Park lands from water system projects for the Colorado River Storage Project. Those areas not so lucky were outside of the boundaries, and including the famous Glen Canyon Dam - which always makes me thing of Edward Abbey for obvious reasons. The next target was a big one as well - and much more known... dams within the Grand Canyon.

For the Grand Canyon the stakes were definitely high, and the national prominence of this feature made it easier to win the hearts of the public. The rhetoric changed somwhat, but continued to include the spiritual, the historical, and most important, the health and wellness of our society. Zanhiser, quoted in 1964 - summed up beautifully the position: "Out of the winderness has come the substance of our culture, and with a living wilderness... we shall also have a vibrant, vital culture, an enduring civilization of healthful, happy people who... perpetually renew themselves in contact with the earth." (p.233)


:: image via Wikipedia

These references back to Thoreau, Muir, and Olmsted were used often and continued to carry weight in the fight for wilderness, and was ultimately successful in removing dams from the Grand Canyon. Although thousands of acres of other wilderness were flooded in the search for water in the west, the victory was a big one for the Wilderness movement, and has influenced the environmental ethics of our modern society.

Another aspect of the book references some of the counterculture ideas of wilderness as we grappled with our desire to inhabit metropolitan areas, our love of the pastoral middle ground, and the desire to visit wild nature - all in conflict with one another. MacKaye folds this idea into the idea of our evolution, in three centuries, from "...the implantation in human nature, especially that of Americans, of a desire to be simultaneously "the pioneer, the husbandman, [and] the townsman." He further this into the field of environmental planning, showing that it "...must permit man to indulge the 'three sides of [his] inward nature.'" (p.243)

The idea of biophilia continued to be used as a reason for wilderness protection - with pyschologists lauding the stress-relieving qualities of interaction with nature. As our cities continued to expand, this tenet in which Olmsted based much of his work continued to be included as a vital aspect of our burgeoning urbanism. Another aspect that continually was used and gained additional rigor was the idea of ecology. "Wilderness played an important role in, and was a major beneficiary of, this new ecology-oriented conservvation. In the first place, the concept of wilderness was a pointed reminder of man's biological origins, his kinship with all life, and his continued membership in the biotic community." (p.253)


:: Forest Park (Portland, OR) - image via Travel Portland

The made it more difficult to rationalize our long-standing idea of the dominance of nature for many reasons - as we had become folded into the idea of wilderness - not removed from it with economics, religion, or politics. "From this perspective of dependency on the environment came a view of man 'as part of the system of nature, not demigods above or outside it.' This idea of a continuous web that includes man was, of course, the essence of the ecological perspective." (p.253)

The final section of the book, the Epilogue entitled 'The Irony of Victory' is another interesting historical evolution of wilderness. The sum of this chapter is that the success of wilderness protection and education has created such increased visitation to our National Parks and other areas that they have essentially been 'loved to death.' Gear, guided trips, and information made it possible for many to access these areas - seen by many as our rights due to their inclusion in the public trust. This parks-for-people vs. loving-to-death is something we still grapple with, and its interesting to see this in the context of the late 60s... roadless areas, hotels, viewsheds, and other issues that continue to threaten our parks - even airborne pollution and poor fire management - all degrade the idea of wilderness and public access.

Ecology again proved vital, in determining the 'carrying capacity' and the ability for wilderness to handle the impacts by visitors, and what was the threshold where ecosystems would collapse. Half of this was functional, as the impacts degraded wildlife and ecological function - but the social aspect was just as important - how many people can inhabit 'wild' lands before it ceases to be wilderness.


:: image via Picassa

So is it quotas, more area, better education, more services...? None of these is the silver bullet - but looking at the rich and varied history of the American experience of wilderness gives us something to apply to both urban and wild nature - and continually look to this history to see what mistakes we've made and avoid repeating it over and over. I'm curious to see how Nash has modernized the text, and hope to read the new material to see how it fits into our modern world - but as it's own piece of work - the 60s era version of 'Wilderness and the American Mind' is necessary reading for anyone claiming to have a green bone in their body.

Read Part I: Reading List: Wilderness and the American Mind

Reading List: Wilderness & The American Mind

Taking a break from the computer and the endless array of blog posts gives one an opportunity to reconnect with the written word in a different way. (For full disclosure, I hate reading on the computer - so really have to slog through text heavy posts and articles...) A couple of interesting books that I've worked through in the past month couldn't be more different - but somehow, in the very Gaian way, are related. The first - which I picked up after hearing the amazing Paul Stamets speak, is his great book Mycelium Running. Second, which I picked up for a steal in a used bookstore on a recent trip to Mt. Shasta, is 'Wilderness and the American Mind' by Roderick Nash.


:: image via Yale Univ. Press

While my copy was not the much sexier and updated 4th edition seen above, it is sometimes nice to read the original, being able to place the thought in the context of publication - in this case the 1967 version. While not necessarily breaking any new ground, this is one of the most comprehensive studies of the history of our relationship with Wilderness from the uniquely American perspective, and offers insight into our cultural baggage that influences our relationship with nature and the world even today.

Encompassing an arc of history from the early settlers to the 1960s, it's fascinating to see the linear narrative of Wilderness and our shift of ideology from fear, to celebration, to exploitation, and finally to our current state of tension that still exists today. Starting with our European ideas of wilderness expressed by early settlers - the fear of the dark primeval forest and it's dangerous denizens is shaped by an utter lack of true Wilderness that these people had to experience in settled Europe. This is contrasted by Nash in the views of Eastern cultures that had a more subtle and less binary view of wilderness.

The shift from pilgrim fear to pioneering domination shaped the next era, as wilderness was meant to be dominated as an expression of our growth and western expansion. Civilization was countered with a desire for escape to the surrounding pastoral areas. The western push opened up a view of untouched scenery that amazed the viewers with it's rugged beauty and became a defining element of the 'American' wilderness as like none other in the world.

Following such writers and explorers such as the transcendentalits Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, the explorer and wilderness fighter John Muir, wildlife watchers such as John James Audubon, and also the defining guidance of Frederick Law Olmsted in his support of the protection of Yosemite in the 1860s. Building on the work of urban parks as places of the respite in cities to restore the health and vigor of residents, the large parks provided a national analog in being able to provide a counterpoint to development and need protection from the mental stress that results from our industrious society. His report on Yosemite in 1865 included the declaration that: "the enjoyment of scenery employs the mind without fatigue and yet enlivens it; and thus, through the influence of the mind over the body, gives the effect of refreshing rest and reinvigoration to the whole system." (p.106)

:: Yosemite - image via PD Photos

The continual wilderness preservation movement followed Yosemite and included Yellowstone, spawning the National Park movement and a serious approach to significant protection of large areas of land that had both regional and national significance. With Muir at the helm, a rampant public movement was instilled in the American social experiment with a tangible value of the places within our growing country. A duality emerged: "The schism ran between those who defined conservation as the wise us or planned development of resources and those who have been termed preservations, with their rejection of utilitarianism and advocacy of nature unaltered by man." (p.129)

This 'schism' created some of the polarity of wilderness vs. development that persists to this day. While it is inevitable that the pendulum of wilderness protection would swing towards the 'cult-like', this binary approach to wilderness protection, while providing a strong movement for protection, created an equal and vibrant opposition in the form of those who put people and progress above nature in all aspects. Again, Olmsted comes out of the fray as a mediator (like a good landscape architect), straddling both the preservation ethic as well as lobbying for more parks and wilderness areas in and near cities. Olmsted and fellow landscape architect Charles Eliot: "... proposed that in additon city parks patches of 'wild forest' be preserved close to metropolitan areas... Olmsted felt the current surge of interest in natural landscapes was the result of many Americans' perceiving that 'we grow more and more artificial day by day.'" (p.155)

:: Central Park - image via NYC Architecture

The polar struggle came to a head in the early 20th Century in the form of Hetch Hetchy which pitted a wilderness area against the damming of rivers for the water supply and hydroelectric power for the growing San Francisco metropolitan area. In addition to a media debate, this was a strongly fought political one as well - with the US Government grappling with the difficult task of determining which is more important - the wild lands or the services to our urban dwellers. While one side of the debate argued for progress at any cost, others argued that the value of wilderness was incalcuable in monetary terms. Muir, always the hyperbolist - made it a fight of biblical proportions. "Hetch Hetchy became a sanctuary or temple in the eyes of the defenders. John Muir, for one, believed so strongly in the divinity of wild nature that he was convinced he was doing the Lord's battle in resisting the reservoir." (p.167)

:: Before and After - Hetch Hetchy - images via Wikipedia

Hetch Hetchy, and the eventual crushing blow to the wilderness movement by the passage of the bill in 1913 authorizing the dam and effectively destroying the wilderness in the name of progress. While there were a number of lesser battles, such as the preservation of Muir Woods, this provided a deciding battle for the country. Muir died shortly after in 1914 - and his shoes were left to be filled by a new breed of Wilderness advocate. The one to step up to this was Aldo Leopold.

Read Part II: Wilderness, Continued...

Bad Idea of the Week

This interesting product appeared last week from Inhabitat, consisting of small squares of grass for your desk or home. "These grass squares were designed at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Israel, in 2009 as a way to combine nature and architecture." While a laudable concept in theory, the idea of bring in grass as a landscape component into buildings as a way to combine 'nature' into the environment is pretty misguided and downright funny to me.


:: image via Inhabitat

There's a very vital way to include nature in buildings - called indoor plants, which actually provide benefits well beyond our monocultural lawn counterpart such as increased humidity, purification and removal of pollutants, and are much more beautiful than lawn. Plus, where does it end, when you end up having to buy a small lawnmower and trimmer, then continually spend weekends watering, fertilizing, and applying herbicide to keep your desk neat and groomed to stay within cultural expectations of care. :)