What is "Wilderness?"

[sardog1]

My poll on oxymoronic postings that help others enjoy the "wilderness experience" has caused one participant to ask for another poll. So, here it is:

What is your definition of "wilderness?"

Please vote in the poll, and explain yourself here as you see fit. Please respond to both polls separately -- they ask different questions that are each of interest.

I'll start. IMO, a wilderness is an area that is:

1. Devoid of human-made structures larger than trail signs and pit toilets;
2. Devoid of roads, at least roads that are currently open to vehicles;
3. Large enough and in a condition to support most, if not all, of its pre-European contact fauna and flora; and
4. Large enough that I don't hear any human-generated noise, except an occasional voice, when I'm in it.

Note: If an aircraft passes overhead or even if it lands on a nearby lake or gravel bar (but not a runway), it is still eligible. Otherwise, all of Alaska is out of the picture, and that's not a "wilderness" definition that I care to entertain.

 

[BrentD22]

I would have to say that I think that there is huge amounts of "wilderness" still left. It is simply defined as a large tract of area void of civilation. I happen to live just East of Boston in Sudbury, Mass. Behind my apartment building the city of Sudbury has a large conservation area. Now there is some old celar holes and some old power lines and many trails cut into this area. Now after saying that I would like to say that I believe this area to be a small oasis of wilderness. The hills are covered in trees, there is no sound of the road due to the contour or the hills surrounding this area. There is a summit like area called Tipping Rock web site link here Tipping Rock This area is not hours from a road or ATM, but what it gives me is a brief ecape from civilation. Further up a hill there is a fire tower (obvisouly this is not wilderness), but from this fire tower you can see from Boston to Mt. Wachusett and up to Mt. Monadnock. What I see the most of is trees. Not cars, not buildings, not roads, but trees, birds, hills, and wilderness. Wilderness is all in the preciption. When I am hiking and I hear a highway of cars I pretend it is a water fall. When I see spray paint on rocks I think of it as modern day rock or cave art. Wilderness exsists in small ways and still in amazing large ways. Visit Alaska, visit 10 miles off almost any coast line, visit the North or South poles, visit a desert, visit most of the summits in the White Mountains. What you have in those places is different degrees of wilderness. Do your best to think about those places instead of the new building in your town.

Do you know we have many more times the amount of trees than we had 100 years ago? We do!

Visit the Sandwich Range. There is a research area a bowl. There is a river cutting up the middle of this bowl. On 1 side the trees where cut approx. 110 years ago on the other side it was never cut. The only real difference was the size of the large sugar maples. The rest of the growth was the same. Kinda cool!

 

[funkyfreddy]

I think it's important to preserve whatever pockets of wilderness/wildness we have left. One can argue definitions forever. I think it's better to act and take steps to preserve forests and watersheds, whether they be in Alaska, Asia, South America, or a few miles away from Boston, Albany, or NYC.

It's easy to throw your hands in the air and say that there's no wilderness left, but then you might want to ask yourself what exactly you mean. In the other thread one person defined wilderness as a place where no herd paths or trails exist. The trouble with that definition is that herd paths and trails have run through the forests ever since the first Native Americans came to the continent, the first herd paths being game trails that were followed repeatedly in search of food. Native Americans also blazed trails and started forest fires in order to alter the landscape in favor of different species of plants or animals.

The poster before me, BrentD22, notes that there are more trees in new England now than there were 100 years ago. This is an interesting observation and has much to do with evolving technologies. As wood was used less for energy and coal was used more the forests were allowed to recover. Not that coal is an "earth friendly" product, though its use did take a lot of pressure off the forests. There was also a migration out of the Northeast in the latter 19th centry which went west in search of better farmland.

At this point in time I think the greatest threat to our forests is overpopulation, which brings sprawl and the increased use of oil as an energy source. I still have hope though and will work towards conservation and protection of existing forests in the Northeast. I would further suggest that a healthy forest or landscape is one that is constantly evolving. In geologic times one could say that the last ice age was not that long ago.

Anyway I've gone on a bit too long for now. My greatest hope for the human species is that we finally learn how to become good stewards and caretakers of the planet we live on and move away from being the short sighted exploiters we've been in the past.

 

[Barry Sr]

All this flora and fauna crap is confusing. If I were in the deep desert, what little vegitation and wildlife matters not. That's wilderness.

I consider the uninterupted blis I experience in the local woods,(Blue Hills less than a couple of miles from Boston), or on the AT miles from civilization, with or without others there, or on a peak in the Whites my wilderness. I am alone tonight at home on the net uninterupted, talking about the wilderness, good enough wilderness for right now.

 

[eddie]

I think you can categorize degrees of wilderness in nature by how influenced a setting (forest, desert, tundra) is by man. The less influenced the wilder it is. The measurement of "wild" in the Adirondacks would look like a topo map - some areas are wild (Cold River area), some moderately wild (Feldspar Brook) and some are not wild at all (Tail 'O the Pup). The top of Everest is not so wild anymore but Antarctica is.

 

[RoySwkr]

I think the original concept of wilderness was that because there were no other people there (except your group):
1) You could pretty much do what you pleased as there was nobody to complain
2) Anything that happened you had to deal with yourself as there was nobody else to help you
I would say there is nowhere in this country that fully meets these criteria, you would need to go to Antarctica or some remote part of a 3rd world country for these to apply.

Somebody (Watermans?) said Wilderness with capital W was that land designated by Congress, while they do try to keep structures out it is generally far more overrun by people and has more rules than similar non-Wilderness areas. John Muir is probably turning over in his grave.

I happen to live just East of Boston in Sudbury, Mass.

Time for a new compass ?

Further up a hill there is a fire tower (obvisouly this is not wilderness),

Understatement of the year, how many antennas on/near that tower?

 

[stopher]

The top of Everest is not so wild anymore . . .

The top of Everest is peopled by a race that thoughtlessly discards its refuse, whether that refuse be tents, food packaging, oxygen bottles or corpses. Everest never was about wilderness. Nor is/was it about immersing one's self in the natural world. It's about challenge. It was about a quest to overcome one's own limitations to enjoy a fleeting victory over nature. It is now about commercialism gone berserk. Nothing to do with wilderness.

This is not intended as a troll. Just my two cents.

 

[Pete_Hickey]

If it has been mapped, and/or its features have been named, it isn't wilderness.

 

[sardog1]

Sardog, did you get this idea from the back page of the WODC newsletter?

Nope. The idea for the poll was suggested by a participant in the other "wilderness" poll here. My own definition of "wilderness" has its origins in my experiences in the BWCA, WY, WA, and AK, and in Sigurd Olson's writings about the BWCA and other canoe country in Canada.

(The dogs were pleased to meet you as well. But they complained all the way home about not getting a Chompburger and a beer. )

 

[kwc]

"... my principal objection to wilderness is that it may teach us to be dismissive or even contemptuous of such humble places and experiences. Without our quite realizing it, wilderness tends to privilege some parts of nature at the expense of others. Most of us, I suspect, still follow the conventions of the romantic sublime in finding the mountaintop more glorious than the plains, the ancient forest nobler than the grasslands, the mighty canyon more inspiring than the humble marsh." - William Cronon in The Trouble With Wilderness
Cronon also quotes Gary Snyder in the same essay, "A person with a clear heart and open mind can experience the wilderness anywhere on earth. It is a quality of one's own consciousness. The planet is a wild place and always will be."
Wilderness is a state of mind, it's definition varying from person to person, culture to culture. To the Koyukon of Alaska there is no such thing as wilderness, yet most of us would probably consider the land which the Koyukon live to be wilderness. To quote Richard Nelson, "This apparently untrodden forest and tundra country is thoroughly known by a people whose entire lives and cultural ancestry are inextricably associated with it. The lakes, hills, river bends, sloughs, and creeks are named and imbued with personal or cultural meanings. Indeed, to the Koyukon these lands are no more a wilderness than are farmlands to a farmer or streets to a city dweller." From Make Prayer to the Raven

 

[funkyfreddy]

If it has been mapped, and/or its features have been named, it isn't wilderness.

I disagree. The map is not the territory. Labeling or naming a place or thing doesn't change its nature, only our perception of it.

There are many places on the earth that have been mapped and named but we still know very little about, particularly the oceans. Would you consider the bottom of the sea wilderness? I would.

Personally I prefer a more fluid definition of wilderness, no pun intended.

 

[brianW]

I believe the definition of "wilderness" depends on the perspective of the individual. Most people on this board view it ( i assume) as an area that lacks human structures. At the same time someone that grew up in an urban area might believe "wilderness" is the area in the city park that has the bushes and no trails.

 

[dave.m]

The Legal Definition

From the the Wilderness Act which gave us the USFS designation of a Wilderness Area (capital 'W'):

"A wilderness, in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. An area of wilderness is further defined to mean in this Act an area of undeveloped Federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation, which is protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions and which (1) generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable; (2) has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation; (3) has at least five thousand acres of land or is of sufficient size as to make practicable its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition; and (4) may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, educational, scenic, or historical value."

I am reminded of a huge unpaid that I owe to Eugene Miya whenever this topic comes up.

 

[Wild]

If, in the best of conditions, I still stand a good chance of getting so lost that I never come home again, then it's wilderness. I'm only a moderately skilled woodsman, but given good weather and a compass, I am confident that I could muddle my way out of most places in the Northeast. Alaska, Antarctica, now that's a different story.

 

[sardog1]

Re: The Legal Definition

"an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain. . . ."

I am reminded of a huge unpaid that I owe to Eugene Miya whenever this topic comes up.

I am reminded of the guy behind the words: Howard Zahniser

 

[stopher]

And the words always start me thinking about Aldo Leopold first; and then Richard Costley and Bill Worf, two Forest Service managers who had to turn a Congressional bill into a working national management plan. Neither ever gave up their fight to keep the Wilderness Act true to the ideals and vision of Leopold. Sadly, I must confess that I believe the bureaucrats and special interest groups have turned it into a land grab.

 

[Warren]

Been thinking about this thread since it started and I haven't come up with a better answer than "I'll know it when I see (experiance?) it".

A while back I took a friend for the first time to the Pharaoh Lake wilderness area. We started at Pharaoh Lake and hiked around to Rock Pond. He felt that Rock Pond was more wild and remote than Pharaoh. Yet we were closer to a road there than at Pharaoh

 

[MadRiver]

A friend of mine who grew up in Manhattan held that anything north of Manhattan was the Canadian wilderness and anything south of Manhattan was deliverance country.

 

[Skiddah]

My personal definition for wilderness would be: Anywhere that a person can go and not touch/smell/see/hear a single sound of the automation of humankind's machinery. If you can go somewhere on this planet and be completely away from automobiles and other mechanized contraptions (and not even hear them) then you have found a piece of wilderness. Modern constructions such as a house or a fire tower also spoil the wilderness.

A lean-to is a minor deviation from true wilderness, but one that I am loath to complain about.

The hundred mile wilderness in northern Maine is a real treat. It is definitely a place to get away from it all. I was hoping that I had a photo of the warning sign at the trailhead in Monson. As you head north into the "wilderness" there is a sign cautioning hikers against underestimating the time and energy required to get through. Take ten days of food with you it says.

Reading the log books in the lean-tos would suggest that food is a common problem. Bum knees are the second biggest problem. Being weekend warriors, we usually take pity on the thru-hikers and leave extra food at the shelters (I usually need to lighten the load anyway).

 

[Pete_Hickey]

A friend of mine who grew up in Manhattan held that anything north of Manhattan was the Canadian wilderness and anything south of Manhattan was deliverance country.

That reminds me of a sign I saw on a bike ride to NYC last year. On a narrow strip of land between the Riverside Drive and the Hudson River, there is a sign, "Forever Wild"