Monday, September 22, 2014
Owen Brown and Social Isolation
The passage of interest that I read in class occurred very early on in Cloudsplitter and talked about Owen Brown's decision to write Miss Mayo as opposed to talking to her. The passage delves into Owen's old age and isolation and how "solitude" became the crazed man's "reward and nourishment" (5). It seems that in Owen's detachment from society he had lost the ability to connect with another person verbally. For me, this raised an idea about just how destructive isolation in a wilderness like the Adirondacks can be to a person who has no one else to communicate with and just how essential other people are to our individual well-being. In today's unbelievably connected and social world, we revere the Adirondacks and other landscapes that allow us to escape humanity. I believe it is important to remember the power of the wilderness and how transformative it can be on the mind of a socially detached person. We are incredibly social animals and humans require interaction with one another as a basic element to mental health. A balance between society and the wilderness should be sought after in order to respect the natural world and its power while maintaining an essential connection with other people.
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I agree with this insight, but the next question is how does one achieve this balance? I think that there is a way to balance human interaction and wilderness experience, but not simultaneously. Owen Brown was only able to experience the power of wilderness because he was alone. Had he been with other people, his character could have been much different. The balance you speak of can somewhat be related to what people seek by living in the Adirondack Park. But these people are not living alone like Owen Brown. They are having human interaction, which might actually distract them from the wilderness effects and impacts on the human mind. I believe that the only way to achieve the balance is to fully immerse oneself alone in the wilderness every once in a while, and then return to society. One cannot experience either aspect without sacrificing one of them fully.
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