Matt Klein approximately 250 words
INTD 105-19: Science Writing
“The Trouble with Wilderness” Response
By Matt Klein
William Cronon begins his argument describing humanity’s relationship with nature by explaining past and current beliefs about wilderness. Before the nineteenth century, the “wilderness” was something to be feared. Few ventured there, and the biblical association with the word—the place of Moses’ exile and Jesus’ struggle with Satan—was extremely negative. With the coming of writers such as Thoreau and John Muir, that connotation was completely reversed. Cronon gives two sources for these individuals’ reactions to the wilderness: the sublime, the grandeur of nature through with God can be seen, and the frontier, the opportunity for people to free themselves from civilization through primitivism and become their own individuals. This sentiment led to the birth of environmentalism and conservation in order to preserve the sublime and the frontier. The focus of “The Trouble with Wilderness” is Cronon’s disagreement with the concept of conservation for nature’s sake. Though he admits we should honor nature since it has its own autonomy, he argues that, in attempting to preserve nature, we ironically bring human culture to it. Cronon believes that, if we accept our involvement in nature, “if wildness can stop being just out there and start being also in here,” then we can “[struggle] to live rightly in the world.”
“The Trouble with Wilderness” strongly relates to my mini-essay about the Arboretum. Since the concept of the Arboretum is similar to the parks and nature preserves mentioned by Cronon, his analysis can be directly applied to the relationship of nature and human culture seen at the Arboretum.