Writing the Wild: Nature, Culture, and American Literature

So, who do you think got it right?

Is our conception of nature — as a special, redemptive place apart from human civilization, a space endowed with “spiritual” qualities that restores the individual — now dead? Because man has so fundamentally altered weather patterns even for the most distant mountain peak, has global warming killed the Romantic love affair with this idea of wilderness? (McKibben)

Or, is this kind of plangent lament *exactly* the problem — that our concept of the wild was seriously flawed, even dangerously unenvironmental, to begin with? (Cronon) Do we need to discard the wild, or celebrate its demise, and even move to a different configuration of human-nature relationships?

If you discuss, please ground your discussion in the two essays by the authors, quoting and referring to them as necessary.

There’s an informative discussion of McKibben’s book by an environmental philosopher in Canada here — it features some choice quotes from McKibben where he tries to respond to the Cronon critique.

What Am I Bid for the American Wild?
by: Michael Winship, t r u t h o u t | Perspective. www.truthout.org

Bryce National Park in Utah. (Photo: Ron Niebrugge)

Check out Michael Winships acerbic expose on what the Bush administration is doing to American national wilderness areas in the last days before Obama takes office. Sadly, this kind of deregulation of public space, and opening wilderness areas like the one pictured above to oil and natural gas drilling (under so-called “leasing” of the land), will be very hard decisions for an Obama administration to change or reverse.