Cohabitation: Just a pipe dream?

        By dint of its very existence, the Adirondack Park forces us to think about what man's cohabitation with nature should look like. As he wanders through its landscape, McKibben offers his own insight into the matter, as well as the thoughts of those he travels with along the way. As we discussed in class, humans have set themselves apart from the natural world (of which they are intrinsically a part) in order to take stewardship of it. This relationship has proved more successful in the Adirondack Park than in most other parts of the world. Of course, as both Bill McKibben and Paul Schneider acknowledge, the relationship has its rough patches, even in the 'dacks. Schneider writes "The story of this century has been the struggle to transform that initial romantic infatuation with the wilds of the Adirondacks into a sustainable marriage-to find an acceptable definition of wilderness that can survive our culture's seemingly insatiable desires" (xii).
         I finished Wandering Home with a cautious sense of optimism on the subject of coexistence, which McKibben shares. While I realize that the author's dream of a society unburdened by hyperindividualism, "where neighbors provide more for each other...bottling wine and making music" is a bit of a pipe dream (he realizes it too, I think), I certainly felt more hopeful after meeting each of the characters that McKibben travels with along the way. The once 'kingpin of hemp' Netaka White proved my favorite tall, skinny walking companion (52). Of course, not all of the Adirondack Park's 130,000 year-round residents are tall, skinny hippies with a penchant for environmentalism, as McKibben's experience might lead us to believe. Most of the park's residents are concerned primarily with their own livelihood, with good reason; the Adirondacks are not an easy place to make a living.
         And yet, the vast majority of those who choose to live in the Adirondacks year-round can be considered "wilderness people," as Jeanne Robert Foster would put it-people who feel the permanent draw of the mountains and the rivers. They would have to be, for the Adirondacks are not a place for those who need a constant Wi-Fi signal. These people are "solidly wedded" to the Adirondacks, as Schneider would put it. As nature's stewards, they are better examples than most. And this gives me hope that in other areas of the world, where the government has not drawn lines separating "wilderness" and "civilization," this New York park can serve as an example of the successful cohabitation of man and nature.