In class on Wednesday someone brought up the section of Wandering Home in which McKibben encounters one yellow posted sign after another. As I read over the passage, I began to reflect on the concepts of public and private property within the park. The concept of land ownership in any form has always puzzled me in some degree. I can reasonably understand claiming ownership of a house one has built and/or put money and time into or a field that one farms. However, claiming ownership of a piece of land that you do not intend to truly inhabit and then choosing to prevent people from walking through it baffles me.
Owning the right to manipulate land is a concept I understand; after all, I wouldn't want to find someone else taking resources from something I've used my own resources to gain ownership of. However, I personally don't understand the concept of owning the right to limit experience of land. My concept of nature, which I've been loosely referring to as land, is a piece of earth that is uninhabited by man. If someone owns just an acre of forest from the road to the lake I see how that gives them a right to prevent anyone from manipulating that land in any way, but I do not see the motivation behind preventing people from walking though that acre. In my utopian, and purely imagined, world there would be more welcome signs marking property lines that ask people to respect the land and it's owners while also sharing the experience of it. The concept of private property and, in a sense, owning nature prevents the love of the land that McKibben deems necessary in order to preserve and protect the park as a whole.
Owning the right to manipulate land is a concept I understand; after all, I wouldn't want to find someone else taking resources from something I've used my own resources to gain ownership of. However, I personally don't understand the concept of owning the right to limit experience of land. My concept of nature, which I've been loosely referring to as land, is a piece of earth that is uninhabited by man. If someone owns just an acre of forest from the road to the lake I see how that gives them a right to prevent anyone from manipulating that land in any way, but I do not see the motivation behind preventing people from walking though that acre. In my utopian, and purely imagined, world there would be more welcome signs marking property lines that ask people to respect the land and it's owners while also sharing the experience of it. The concept of private property and, in a sense, owning nature prevents the love of the land that McKibben deems necessary in order to preserve and protect the park as a whole.
In the Forward of the Atlas, Bill Mckibben states “But if that is all the visitor notices, then they miss what may be the park’s real glory- the fact that wilderness coexists with human settlement” (Atlas VIII). He goes on to state how many look to the Adirondacks so “they might manage the same trick of letting people and nature make their livings in more or less the same place” (Atlas VIII). I agree that this flourishing of humans and of the wilderness in the same region is largely why the Adirondacks is such a unique park. However, I agree with Corrine in that just because humans live here as well, private property only serves to exclude others from the benefits of the wild. Nice Job!
ReplyDelete