Drew S****
Professor X
ENGL
1 April 2013
Wilderness
The meaning of wilderness has changed over time, and today there is a debate surrounding the meaning of wilderness. William Cronon says in “The Trouble with Wilderness”, “As late as the eighteenth century, the most common usage of the word ‘wilderness’ in the English language referred to landscapes that generally carried adjectives far different from the ones they attract today. To be a wilderness then was to be ‘deserted,’ ‘savage,’ ‘desolate,’ ‘barren’—in short, a ‘waste,’ the word’s nearest synonym” (Cronon 165). To most people today wilderness is a place untouched by humans and home to nature and the sublime. William Cronon claims that we should view wilderness as part of us and everything around us. The wilderness is a place unaltered by humans, these places are disappearing and we need to protect them. William Cronon’s “The Trouble with Wilderness” presents an interesting view on what wilderness is. His view is completely different from both the old definition and the current definition. He says, “It is not the things we label as wilderness that are the problem, but rather what we ourselves mean when we use the label” (Cronon 174). Cronon doesn’t believe that the things we currently define as wilderness shouldn’t be called wilderness, but he believes that there is a problem with only recognizing certain places to be wilderness. In his essay Cronon says, “If wild nature is the only thing worth saving, and if our mere presence destroys it, then the sole solution to our own unnaturalness, the only way to protect sacred wilderness from profane humanity, would seem to be suicide. It is not a proposition that seems likely to produce very positive or practical results” (Cronon 176). In this quote he is pointing out the flaw is some environmentalists view, I agree that this idea is flawed. Cronon instead suggests that we should see wilderness as part of everything. In Cronon’s view, we can’t destroy wilderness because it is everywhere, not just in designated areas. This point of view is an optimistic view of wilderness but it ignores that fact that we are destroying our Earth’s vital resources at an alarming rate. Cronon’s view of wilderness is not conducive to the long term health of the wilderness. Wilderness used to have a negative meaning in society. Wilderness had this negative meaning mostly because the Bible used it in a negative way. In the Bible the wilderness was a place people went to as punishment from God, in the wilderness Jesus and Moses were tempted by Satan to lose their faith. These Bible stories instilled fear in society up through the eighteenth century. Toward the end of the 18th century the meaning of wilderness shifted to what most people see it as today. I believe that “Wilderness is the wildest of the wild. It has no roads, no development. It is the last remnant of pristine wildlands that once stretched from coast-to-coast” (Wilderness.org). Humans over many centuries have expanded their footprint on their Earth and meanwhile we have destroyed wilderness to make room for civilization. The Encyclopedia of the Earth says, “While there are a number of clearly defined processes leading to destruction of habitat, the underlying cause of all these is the human population explosion” (eoearth.org). We need to recognize the fragility of the last remaining places of wilderness before we destroy it. Without wilderness humans could not last on Earth so we must protect it. The only way to save the wilderness that remains is by actively protecting it. I believe that conservation is the best route to keeping nature intact, conservation being the idea that we need to properly use nature. Cronon agrees by saying, “The wilderness dualism tends to cast any use as abuse, and thereby denies us a middle ground in which responsible use and non-use might attain some kind of kinship. My own belief is that only by exploring this middle ground will we learn ways of imagining a better world for all of us” (Cronon 178). The wilderness is damaged more from people exploiting it for the land or resources than from people that properly use the wilderness for recreation. In 1964 the United States became the first country to define and label wilderness areas through law with the Wilderness Act. Howard Zahniser was the author of the Wilderness Act. The word Zahniser used to define wilderness is untrammeled. “Zahniser defined ‘untrammeled’ in the Wilderness Act as ‘not being subject to human controls and manipulations that hamper the free play of natural forces’” (Wilderness.net). Zahniser’s Wilderness Act was the start of the US government’s involvement with conservation. “Since the Wilderness Act passed in 1964, Congress has designated nearly 110 million acres of federal wildlands as official wilderness” (Wilderness.org). The Wilderness Act has served to help protect wilderness without completely removing humans from the wilderness. Conservation is the best middle ground between exploiting wilderness and taking humans out of wilderness. We don’t have to remove ourselves from wilderness to find a balance.
Cronon and I both have complex views on wilderness and humans’ relationship with it, our views are sometimes in agreement and sometimes in disagreement. Wilderness once was everything on Earth, but humans have destroyed and exploited most of it to the point that now we must place great emphasis on saving what little is left untouched. If we do not change our course we will destroy the last of the wilderness and, along with it, our ability to live on Earth. We must follow the view that wilderness is.

Sources
What Is "Wilderness"?" Wilderness.net. The University of Montana, n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2013.
"Wilderness.org." Wilderness.org. The Wilderness Society, n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2013.
C Michael Hogan (Lead Author);Patricia Gowaty (Topic Editor) "Habitat destruction". In:
Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment). [First published in the Encyclopedia of Earth July 22, 2010; Last revised Date June 10, 2012; Retrieved April 1, 2013 <http://www.eoearth.org/article/Habitat_destruction?topic=49513>
Cronon, William. The Trouble with Wilderness. In Encounters, Essays for Exploration and Inquiry. Hoy, Pat C. II and Robert Diyanni. McGraw Hill, Boston, MA. 2d ed., 200. 0072290455. Pp. 163-187,