In his essay called The Trouble with Wilderness, historian Bill Cronon writes, “In virtually all of its manifestations, wilderness represents a flight from history.” This statement, while seemingly vague, forms the basis of his criticism of the paradigms in American society regarding the natural environment and how the relationship between humans and nature has changed dramatically throughout history. He then goes on to discuss the modern American environmental movement and some of the risks that it can pose if it is perpetrated in the wrong manner.
The statement that wilderness represents a flight from history in its most basic understanding means that in Cronon’s point of view, American wilderness is purely a construct of modern, urban industrial civilization that directly opposes previous historical thoughts about the relationship between man and nature. In the past, humans generally did not have the desire to wander around remote corners of the planet just on the premise of ‘getting away from it all’ or for strictly recreational purposes—they explored mostly for economic and subsistence reasons. Wilderness was a dangerous place to which people only came against their will, which contrasts greatly with the thoughts about wilderness in the nineteenth century brought forth by people like Thoreau and John Muir, who began treating wilderness as a place for self-fulfillment and getting closer to God.
The idea of American wilderness became highly romanticized in the 19th and 20th centuries, and it still retains some of that idealism today. Since the United States was such a vast country with a relatively small population, the romantic ideas of the wide-open, majestic frontier and seemingly endless unexplored territory fueled the American drive to expand westward. The idea of wilderness became intertwined with notions of primitivism and masculinity while contributing to a national renewal. Men who became fearful of the feminizing tendencies of civilization moved their families to wild frontier land and “shed the trappings of civilization, rediscovered their primitive racial energies, reinvented direct democratic institutions, and reinfused themselves with a vigor, an independence, and a creativity that [became] the source of American democracy and national character” (Cronon 8).
However, by the late nineteenth century, this uniquely American source of identity—the frontier—began to disappear, and the roots of the American environmental movement became prevalent in the form of wilderness preservation. National leaders and representatives of the state such as Theodore Roosevelt, fueled by romantic and nostalgic ideas of the great frontier and masculinity, began creating the vast national parks that Americans appreciate so much today. However, as a result of this forced creation, people’s notions of wilderness changed completely—wilderness went from being a place representative of America’s rugged, rural frontier spirit to a place where well-off urbanites could temporarily partake in recreational activities. American wilderness and national parks turned into a vacation-spot for the wealthy class, evoking notions of elitism and class separation instead of the original intent to recover the frontier ideas of primitivism and rugged masculinity.
Because the United States government mandated the creation of these new national parks, they came with some of the negative side-effects of massive state-imposed projects. For example, many of the national parks and wilderness areas have been the traditional homes for various Native American tribes for thousands of years, but the tribes were forced off of their land for the creation of simulated virgin, uninhabited land. By creating national parks, the US government participated in this an unnatural ordering, which dramatically changed American wilderness from rugged, unpredictable frontier land to false ‘virgin’ land. The traditional hom of indigenous people but had been morphed by the federal government into a playground for the urban elite. Perhaps Cronon puts it best when he says that this ‘uninhabited’ wilderness created by authoritarian high-modernism “reminds us just how invented, just how constructed, the American wilderness really is” (10).
The process of the authoritarian ‘creation’ of American wilderness has myriad implications for the modern environmentalist movement. Many environmental organizations advocate for the protection of threatened lands across the globe, such as the rainforests in Brazil and Indonesia or the African savannah. However, many of these environmentalists look at these lands from the American perspective of wilderness, which does not necessarily take into account that indigenous people have lived in these areas for thousands of years. According to Cronon, if these environmentalists fight to preserve their ideas of ‘wilderness’ from the native people who utilize the biodiversity for their subsistence and economic benefit, they “run the risk of reproducing the same tragedy—being forceably removed from an ancient home—that befell American Indians” (13).
Another downside for modern environmentalism may be a lack of focus directly related to the idealization of fabricated wilderness. This idealization can lead environmentalists astray from focusing on the issues that directly relate to most people, which usually occur in cities and other places with a relatively high density of human population. A strong focus on uninhabited ‘wilderness’ can lead to a separation between romanticized visions of nature and the real issues that directly impact humans and their surroundings, such as healthy, pollution-free air, clean drinking water, and environmental justice. Cronon does not speak against the premise of environmentalism in his essay, he just warns of the implications that the modern American view of ‘wilderness’ can have on the environmental movement.
Throughout American history, our notion of wilderness has undergone a dramatic change from that of a wild frontier land to an artificial, government-protected land with its indigenous people replaced by wealthy urbanites that bring along with them the modern civilization that they are trying to flee. This is why wilderness represents a flight from history—its meaning and usage transformed with the last of the frontier and the creation of the national park system. In order to respect the real natural world and not just an idealized version, we need to appreciate natural beauty wherever it occurs—from the trees that give us shade while walking along Peachtree Street to the tallest peaks of the Himalayas—wilderness and natural beauty abound all over the world, and humans are undeniably reliant on it for the survival and well-being of our species.
