Just as Terrie gives it the power of persistence, those who lived within it also sensed its spirit. Henry Conklin assigned his home humanistic characteristics when he described it upon leaving; "As I glanced at the creek as its gurgling waters were running under the ice, whose music had often lulled me to sleep, I looked back at the cabin and the light was still burning, and I fancied I heard their cries of anguish"(42, Terrie). This time, the wild becomes something that gurgles and creates music - again something human.
I can't help but think that this is a bit of an underestimation of the power of the natural world. Perhaps if writers use human-like qualities to describe the wilderness, it will seem like a an entity that can be conquered, or at least molded to fit our needs as a species. Or maybe this is just the only way we know how to describe things - anthropocentrism at its finest. After all, what is the wilderness actually encroaching on or "persisting" against? The wilderness is not invading our territory, rather the inverse. For the most part at least, it seems that the general consensus is that the wilderness is a force to be reckoned with.
Amelia I'm so glad you chose this line from the Terrie reading to talk about! One of the things I found most distressing from the reading was the lack of self-awareness that the settlers had for their long-term impact on their changing landscape. I think that this lack of understanding is best exemplified by the quote you chose: "every town and county passed ordinances at eradicating predators, the most powerful symbol of the persisting wilderness" (Terrie, 43). The most interesting thing to me about this quote is that Terrie talks of the settlers "eradicating predators" yet never once indicates that these settlers were at all attuned to the fact that they themselves were the mightiest predators out there. As foreigners coming into this wilderness with technology at their side and a hearty sense of entitlement, humans were--and are--the top-of-the-food-chain, force-to-be-reckoned-with predators of the young Adirondack Park (and most other places in the human-populated world). So as humans killed the predatory symbol of wilderness, they themselves earned the badge of the predatory symbol of civilization.
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