Protect, but Adapt.

Throughout the book Wandering Home, McKibben presents us with many different ways that his friends and colleagues, specifically those he shares some of his walk with, are attempting to conserve the wilderness; whatever that may mean to them. He tells us about small scale, local farmers, as well as a friend of his, John Davis, who works at an organization called the Foundation for Deep Ecology, which essentially promotes "wildlands philanthropy,"(100)* in which wealthy people buy up big areas of land in order to preserve them. He also relates information about Howard Zahniser, a man who drafts the federal wilderness statute, which protects millions of acres but keeping them free from all human intrusion aside from "wandering around on your own two feet." (118) Many agree with this opinion that the Adirondack park, and other similar territories, should be kept, "forever wild," and though I don't disagree, I don't think it is entirely practical. Keeping humans out of some areas of wilderness is possible, but putting a large focus on this goal will not solve all of our worldly problems. Instead, we need to be more like John Davis and his colleague Tom Butler as we attempt to protect the environment, "and yet adapt a little to the world around [us]." (84-85) Inevitably, humans will inhabit the wilderness in some capacity, so finding away to coexist with the environment, instead of alienating ourselves from it, is the only way to sustain both our existence and the environment's. As of now, as William Cronon, an environmental historian says, we have no large-scale example of successful coexistence between humans and the environment and "little hope of discovering what an ethical, sustainable, honorably human place in nature might actually look like." (97) Now that many laws regarding the protection of the 'wilderness' have been put it place, focus should be shifted to the inhabited wilderness, and attempt to teach humans how to live sustainably and harmoniously with their environment.

*I'm reading an e-book version of Wandering Home, so the page numbers probably won't match up with the print copy.