Our Relationship With The Wild

In this modern era of conservation and environmentalism, we have taken on a romanticized view of the wild. This view is very different from the views of the first settlers, who saw the wild as the enemy of mankind. However, the wild they encountered was very different from the wild we see today, which has been reduced to just a few regions in the country.  These national parks—the Adirondacks, Yellowstone, Yosemite—are all considered to be some of the last remnants of “wild”. Yet, if the wild we see is the same as the wild the settlers of the New World experienced, how is it that we regard it in such a drastically different way? This question interested me very much in class. I personally believe that it was not just the rise of romanticism in literature that facilitated the change in perspective about the wilderness.

The first settlers lived in an era where prosperity and self-made success were the only concerns to be had.  They saw the land as a resource to be exploited and used for their own personal gain, nothing else. Yet, along with these sentiments there was also a feeling of unease and fear towards the surrounding wilderness they lived in.  It’s not as if these feelings were unwarranted. The lifestyle of the first inhabitants of the Adirondack region was rough. Without the resources we have today they struggled for food on a day-to-day basis and suffered through horrible weather conditions without heat, all while trying to settle the land and make a life for themselves. This way of life seems almost prehistoric to us, an age where the wilderness dominated man, not the other way around. Today, in our highly industrialized society, we have the position of power. So, it’s easy for us to look at the wild today with a better attitude. Our interactions with what remains of the wilderness have been reduced to national geographic documentaries and perhaps a trip to the national parks in our country. It’s almost as if the wild is now considered a vacation from the actual world.

In conclusion, our idealistic view of the wild has only become possible through our domination of it. We are no longer threatened by the wild as we once were. Our roles have reversed and now we are the threatening force. To me, there is a sad acknowledgement in our newly developed admiration of the wilderness. For, what was once a powerful, commanding force in the American lifestyle has now been reduced to a few tourist locations weakly dispersed across the country.

Works Cited

Scheider, Paul. The Adirondacks: A History of America's First Wilderness. New York: H. Holt, 1998. Print.