How Romantic.

In the mid- to late-nineteenth century, the Romantics altered the inherent definition of wilderness, challenging a centuries’ old image of wilderness as a corrupting force.  The Adirondack Park played a role in this sea change: its convenient location and ease of access allowed it to become the breeding ground for this fundamental re-evaluation of wilderness.  The park witnessed a complete role reversal in this period, from a savage and corrupting wilderness, full of what the Jesuits called “Iroquois demons,” to a holy and rejuvenating temple whose prophets (for a small fee; i.e. the Adirondack guides) could help cleanse one’s soul from the trappings of civilized life.

As with most intellectual revolutions, the primary thinkers came from money and education on the bustling east coast.  During this period of industrialization, urban life became rank with pollution and overcrowding, so those who could afford to escape on extended vacations fled to the Adirondacks where they made a surprising discovery: Nature is sublime.  The early Romantics struggled to reconcile the new awesome power of nature with traditional savage imagery.  For example, from the top of a pass, Alfred Billings Street proclaimed, “What a sight! Horrible and yet sublimely beautiful—no, not beautiful; scarce an element of beauty there—all grandeur and terror.”  The Romantics saw a raw, powerful God and strove to capture in words the new associations this placed on the perception of wilderness—often settling with wildly conflicting adjectives.  They faced an inner tug-of-war between the ingrained conception of a savage wild and the new pure and holy power they now encountered.

Romantic painter Thomas Cole’s The Course of Empire best encapsulates this shift in philosophy.  The first frame depicts an unruly and dangerous wild that, in the second and third frames, humans transform into a beautiful metropolis only to see it fall to barbarians in frame four.  The final frame is absent of human activity, with the ruins of the city retaken by nature.  This series captures the Romantics’ simultaneous appreciation of progress with a respect for nature’s power to re-absorb civilization after its decent into corruption.  In an urbanizing world, the Romantics must have anticipated that the corruption of the city had reached dangerously high levels, and the only way to prevent nature from overtaking what man had wrought was to seek out reconciliation.  By cleansing their souls in the wilderness, they were able to attain an equilibrium, an existence between the safety of society and the raw power of the wilds.