Paul Weissfellner
Prof. Fenn
INTD 105-19: Science Writing
September 21, 2016
Wild Outside the Wilderness:
Cronon and the Rock Outside Onondaga Hall
In The Trouble With Wilderness, William Cronon describes the history of “wilderness,” and the process that it underwent from being perceived as godforsaken land to representing nature itself and national renewal. He denounces the negligence towards nature that the idea of some far off idealized “true nature” promotes. He implores the reader to recognize the beauty and value of nature wherever it can be found.
In light of this, Cronon would wholeheartedly support the presence of the rock outside Onondaga hall. When Cronon states that “there is nothing natural about the concept of wilderness,” (95) he is protesting against a paradigm of thinking about nature. The rock supports Cronon’s subversion of cultural and philosophical norms by blending the natural and the unnatural, but in a significantly different way than wilderness does. The rock, whether placed intentionally or not, has blurred boundaries; it is both wild, as an object created by natural processes, and constructed, as a part of the larger campus as a whole. Cronon implores us to appreciate nature wherever it can be found, not just in the wilderness (103). The rock’s presence on campus, in such a prominent location, brings each passerby into a world where the human and nonhuman, the natural and the constructed, can exist side by side.
I enjoyed reading your argument that your rock is neither solely nature or unnatural, but a hybrid of the two. I came to a similar conclusion on my own object. They are not isolated from humanity, and yet they are also not products of society either.
Hi Paul, Great work here in your first paragraph using those active verbs to describe Cronon’s position-taking! Fantastic! I really like this idea that the rock is both natural and constructed (I wonder how this constructedness differs from, say, the constructedness of a national park with its lodges and highways for scenic views and overlooks etc.? Would like to know your thoughts about this, and would love to see you comb the Cronon essay for implications about what kind of constructedness he’s defining vs. what kind you’re defining here). There’s also something interesting going on in your final point about the rock’s affect on passersby, which is going to be related to but different from the effect of the awesome waterfall or the garden tree in Cronon’s essay, and I’d like to read more about this in the essay. One clarity issue–the follow-up to the quote feels pretty vague to me, or truncated somehow: I’m not sure what you mean when you say Cronon is “protesting against a paradigm of thinking about nature”–do you mean a certain paradigm? And if so, can you describe it? Nice work here!