William Cronon The Trouble With Wilderness
The Sacrifice for the Wilderness
The whole spectrum of environmentalism and sustainability has been demonstrated through William Cronon’s “The Trouble with Wilderness”, Donald Waller’s “Getting Back to Right Nature”, and David Owen’s “Green Manhattan”. These pieces of writing build on one another while revealing weaknesses the others may maintain. Despite the opposition some of these authors face all three of them share a common goal, the desire to better the wilderness. However, the question still remains, whose solution is best? In a world where opinions and ideas are thrown at people daily it is hard for one to know what the right choice is. This being said, a solution that would contribute to the reader making the best decision, is …show more content…
Cronon focuses around the idea of coexistence with the natural and the human world and the sublimity the wilderness presents. He states, “Wilderness is…a place of freedom in which we can recover the true selves we have lost to the corrupting influences of our artificial lives” (484). This idea of the sublime gives an introduction to Cronon’s central paradox that humans and nature need to coexist to survive. Cronon argues that splitting the human world and the wilderness will result in trouble when he claims, “wilderness represents the false hope of an escape from responsibility, the illusion that we can somehow wipe clean the slate of our past and return to the tabula rasa that supposedly existed…” (484). To eliminate this illusion Cronon suggest creating a “middle ground” a place that combines both the human world and the wilderness in one (Cronon 490). Cronon’s solution for obtaining this so called “middle ground” is to refer to nature as the “other”. He demonstrates this with an example of a tree. Cronon writes, “The tree in the garden is in reality no less other, no less worthy of our wonder and respect, than the tree in an ancient forest” (494). This develops into Cronon’s solution to look at all nature as the same or the “other” and for coexistence to occur. But is Cronon’s vague solution easier said than done? The problem Cronon faces is that his solution, to be one with nature, it too vague and not easily
The whole spectrum of environmentalism and sustainability has been demonstrated through William Cronon’s “The Trouble with Wilderness”, Donald Waller’s “Getting Back to Right Nature”, and David Owen’s “Green Manhattan”. These pieces of writing build on one another while revealing weaknesses the others may maintain. Despite the opposition some of these authors face all three of them share a common goal, the desire to better the wilderness. However, the question still remains, whose solution is best? In a world where opinions and ideas are thrown at people daily it is hard for one to know what the right choice is. This being said, a solution that would contribute to the reader making the best decision, is …show more content…
Cronon focuses around the idea of coexistence with the natural and the human world and the sublimity the wilderness presents. He states, “Wilderness is…a place of freedom in which we can recover the true selves we have lost to the corrupting influences of our artificial lives” (484). This idea of the sublime gives an introduction to Cronon’s central paradox that humans and nature need to coexist to survive. Cronon argues that splitting the human world and the wilderness will result in trouble when he claims, “wilderness represents the false hope of an escape from responsibility, the illusion that we can somehow wipe clean the slate of our past and return to the tabula rasa that supposedly existed…” (484). To eliminate this illusion Cronon suggest creating a “middle ground” a place that combines both the human world and the wilderness in one (Cronon 490). Cronon’s solution for obtaining this so called “middle ground” is to refer to nature as the “other”. He demonstrates this with an example of a tree. Cronon writes, “The tree in the garden is in reality no less other, no less worthy of our wonder and respect, than the tree in an ancient forest” (494). This develops into Cronon’s solution to look at all nature as the same or the “other” and for coexistence to occur. But is Cronon’s vague solution easier said than done? The problem Cronon faces is that his solution, to be one with nature, it too vague and not easily