What is wilderness? T.V shows defined wilderness as being a place away from civilization. Although the urban dictionary explains that the definition of wilderness is what we make it be. It is a statement that holds true for us to define wilderness we have to experience wilderness as I have done so myself. I joined my parents on a weekend to travel up to Asheville to watch my little brother soccer tournament. On the journey to Asheville, I could see the mountains that I haven’t seen in years beginning to pop-up as we approach our destination. The elevation was beginning to make its presence be known as it became harder to breathe. When we arrived at Azaela Park, I had an hour to explore before my whistle blows signaling the beginning of my …show more content…
The noise could have been anything, but what I found took me by surprised. I found a river that had a strong current that resonated through the forest. I analyzed the river for a while, as I sat down on a rock close to the river. I believe that the river was as wide as a basketball court and as deep as the bus that was parked in the parking lot. When I got closer to the river, I also noticed the trees that have grown on the side of the river bank. Other trees weren’t lucky enough, and erosion causes them to drop in the water affecting the current of the river. The water had a greenish brown color, and the current was gentle at times, but in some areas, it was filled with fury. I came to the conclusion that the faint noise was of the current hitting the fallen trees. I guess this is my place of wilderness, but I have yet to find wildlife, and it is an unnerving feeling not being able to find any sign of life besides the existence of human beings. It seems this is bound to be our inevitable future if we do not change our ways for the better. After forty-five minutes, an otter on the other side of the river bank was my only sign of hope. As I experience this, I can define wilderness more accurately that I could have if I wouldn’t have experienced it …show more content…
Wilderness is a place that is full of wildlife in an uncharted territory. A place that is unpredictable and full of danger. A place that forces you to use your skill, tuition, and craftsmanship to fight off the dangers of wilderness to survive. A place that forces you to rely on yourself in order instead of others to survive. A place that has no laws and everything is a fairy game. A place where you can connect to nature. A place where you can become one with nature. A place that changes you instead of you changing the place. The wild may sound like a horrible place, but the wild is undeniably beautiful. After this experience, the wild to me means more than just a place that is uncorrupted to the human hand because humans are a part of wilderness. If I could sit in a rock connecting with wilderness without disrupting the stability then others can as well. I can now understand that we humans are wild and have retreated from the wilderness. I can now see some similarities between the wildlife and humans. We humans are territorial, fight for mates, and thrive on the thought of survival. In the end, all I can see is that we were wild and have domesticized ourselves to the point where we can connect to nature. Although this does not mean we can’t enjoy the wilderness when we feel homesick because the wilderness is our
The wild is a place to push yourself to the limit and take a look at who you truly are inside. “Wilderness areas have value as symbols of unselfishness” (Nash). Roderick Nash’s philosophy states that the wilderness gives people an opportunity to learn humility but they fight this because they do not have a true desire to be humble. Human-kind wants to give out the illusion that they are nature lovers when in reality, they are far from it. “When we go to designated wilderness we are, as the 1964 act says, "visitors" in someone else's home” (Nash). People do not like what they cannot control and nature is uncontrollable. Ecocentrism, the belief that nature is the most important element of life, is not widely accepted. The novel Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer depicts a young boy who goes on an exploration to teach himself the true concept of humility. Chris McCandless, the protagonist, does not place confidence in the universal ideology that human beings are the most significant species on the planet, anthropocentrism.
The people of the Eastern Woodlands made many tools to help them in their everyday lives. They made spears, weirs, nets, bows and arrows, lances, knives, taps, snares and deadfall for hunting. Most of those tools were made of wood or bark and other forest material. Arrowheads were made from chert, or flint, from sedimentary rocks. They were shaped like isosceles triangles, the smallest arrows were used for hunting birds, the bigger ones were to spear bears or deer. Flint knives were often oval, or teardrop shaped. For fishing they made spears, weirs, and nets. They also made canoes from hollowed-out trees to help with fishing in the lakes and streams. Some other tools they made were axes made of stone to strip bark, clear fields and removing fat from hides. Axes
At one point in our lives as human beings we began to draw mental lines between ourselves and nature. This is something that has gradually been increasing throughout their years. Most people do not seem to notice all of these constant changes simply because we are used to the type of world we live in now. I believe that in order for somebody to understand what's happening these negative changes need to affect us as individuals. For example, many people don't realize cutting down trees to build businesses will eventually cause the world to be unsustainable. Nature is something very necessary. "Wilderness" in old English was something that had its own will, just like you mentioned in paragraph three. The Wild is a place where wild undomesticated animals should be allowed to roam
From the prologue through chapter one in “Wilderness and the American Mind”, the author emphasizes the affect wilderness had on the Europeans during the colonization of America. In today’s society, we are familiar with the concept of wilderness but few of us have experienced the feeling of being encapsulated in the unfamiliar territory. Today we long for wilderness, crave it even. We use it as an outlet to escape the pace of life. However, we have a sense of safety that the Europeans did not. We are not isolated in the unfamiliar, help is usually a phone call away. Though we now view the wilderness as an oasis because we enter at our own terms, in the early colonial and national periods, the wilderness was an unknown environment that was viewed as evil and dangerous.
His often utilization of words such as wild, paradise, and pristine in describing these naturalscapes, provided a misinformed idea of what the American West was truly like. This misinformed idea rapidly changed into what people expected from wilderness. They expect to see scenes reminiscent of the Hudson River school and be cleansed by the healing power of Mother Earth (Muir). Through Muir’s expensive definitions on what constitutes a wilderness he has altered the meaning of it. In the late nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, the wilderness served more as an idea than a definable work, Muir and his writing played a major role in defining the wilderness to the city bound masses. Muir’s wilderness is rooted in the idea of an aesthetically pleasing natural scape given they fit into certain criteria such as, “ none of Nature’s landscape’s are ugly so long as they are wild” (Muir). The attachment of this emphasis on an aesthetically pleasing landscape was partial truth, which drove people out the national parks. While these places where indeed wild and beautiful, Muir sold the masses on this idea of all nature being pristine and pure, when in reality that was not the
have both a sense of the importance of the wilderness and space in our culture
Many years ago, people saw the wilderness as a savage wasteland, but today, it is viewed as “the last remaining place where civilization, that all too human disease, has not fully infected the earth.” (Cronon) He discusses this changed point of view by stating the difficulties that society will have rectifying environmental ailments if it stops viewing wilderness as “a dualistic picture in which the human is completely outside the nature.” (Cronon) This is understandable because humans rely on others to create opinions, and they do not know how to form their own thoughts and solutions to issues such as environmental ones. Therefore, it is with great importance that humans begin to learn how to formulate their own thoughts and share those personal thoughts with others, such as sharing solutions about environmental
that is hard to answer. Why not just leave the wilderness alone, and let it
The wilderness allows people to escape the crazy hectic lives they live daily and just unwind. Chris McCandless was “ unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart,” throughout his soul-searching journey in the wilderness (Krakauer 31). Many people like Chris will experience different sensations in the serene wilderness, however it calls
It has never been an uncommon thing for one to retreat to nature in an attempt to ‘find one’s self,’ and somewhat cliché these days is the retreat to nature to ‘find God.’ Hundreds of books, essays, seminars, and retreats devote themselves to helping one understand how to find enlightenment and healing through connecting with nature. It is a phenomenon that transcends religious boundaries—everyone, from Buddhists to Christian Mystics to Quakers, seems to think that the key (or, at least, one of the keys) to enlightenment lies in nature. As one may suppose, this is not a new concept. Throughout literary history, there is a distinct trend of authors praising the virtues of nature, singing of the peace that it brings and the enlightening attributes of these places away from the noise and clutter of the cities. Shakespeare tells of finding “tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, [and] sermons in stone”(Shakespeare); William Wordsworth implores us to let nature be our teacher; Goethe claims that there is rest and respite on the mountain top; and George Washington Carver admits that he tries commune with nature everyday. It seems that from Henry David Thoreau right down to contemporary authors, no generation or writing period has been devoid of at least one prolific author who takes to nature in order to find the answers.
Chris McCandless and Buck serve as examples of the archetype of the wild through their experiences of leaving where they feel most comfortable and answering the call of the wild. They show that each experience is inimitable because the wild is unique to every individual. For Buck, the wild is a place outside of civilization and his dependence on man, where the external threats of nature exist and he must prove himself as a true animal with instincts for survival. In McCandless' case, the place outside of civilization is actually an escape from his fears because the wild for him is in relationships, where the threat of intimacy exists and he must learn to trust others for happiness. This is because for each of us, the wild is what we fear, a place outside of our comfort zone and, as McCandless' experience shows, not necessarily a physical place. To render to the call of the wild we must leave everything that makes us feel protected, and we must make ourselves completely vulnerable to the wild. McCandless and Buck show that in order to successfully respond to the call of the wild we must relinquish control and drop our guards, until ultimately the fear subsides and we find peace with ourselves as well as with our environments.
In Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer explores the human fascination with the purpose of life and nature. Krakauer documents the life and death of Chris McCandless, a young man that embarked on an Odyssey in the Alaskan wilderness. Like many people, McCandless believed that he could give his life meaning by pursuing a relationship with nature. He also believed that rejecting human relationships, abandoning his materialistic ways, and purchasing a book about wildlife would strengthen his relationship with nature. However, after spending several months enduring the extreme conditions of the Alaskan wilderness, McCandless’ beliefs begin to work against him. He then accepts that he needs humans, cannot escape materialism, and can never fully understand how nature functions. Most importantly, he realizes that human relationships are more valuable than infinite solitude. McCandless’ gradual change of heart demonstrates that exploring the wilderness is a transformative experience. Krakauer uses the life and death of Chris McCandless to convey that humans need to explore nature in order to discover the meaning of life.
Being invited to a friend’s house the other day, I began to get excited about the journey through the woods to their cabin. The cabin, nestled back in the woods overlooking a pond, is something that you would dream about. There is a winding trail that takes you back in the woods were their cabin sits. The cabin sits on top of a mountain raised up above everything, as if it was sitting on the clouds.
The ruckus from the bottom of the truck is unbearable, because of the noise and excessive shaking. As we slowly climbed the mountain road to reach our lovely cabin, it seemed almost impossible to reach the top, but every time we reached it safely. The rocks and deep potholes shook the truck and the people in it, like a paint mixer. Every window in the truck was rolled down so we could have some leverage to hold on and not loose our grip we needed so greatly. The fresh clean mountain air entered the truck; it smelt as if we were lost: nowhere close to home. It was a feeling of relief to get away from all the problems at home. The road was deeply covered with huge pines and baby aspen trees. Closely examining the surrounding, it looks as if it did the last time we were up here.
This area of the world is so foreign to my Oklahoma life; it infuses me with awe, and with an eerie feeling of being strongly enclosed by huge mountains, and the mass of tall trees. However, when my foot first steps onto the dusty trail it feels crazily magical. The clean, crisp air, the new smell of evergreen trees and freshly fallen rain is mixed with fragrances I can only guess at. It is like the world has just taken a steroid of enchantment! I take it all in, and embrace this new place before it leaves like a dream and reality robs the moment. As I turn and look at my family, I was caught by my reflection in their impressions. The hair raising mischief in the car was forgotten and now it was time to be caught up in this newness of life. It was as if the whole world around us had changed and everyone was ready to engulf themselves in it. The trickling of water somewhere in the distance and the faint noise of animals all brought the mountains to