Why Humans Need Wild Country
I believe that wild country is important to us as a society and as a species.
Wild country is, to borrow a vocabulary word from the Wilderness Act, untrammeled country. But it is, in my mind, broader than “Wilderness,” which in the United States is a Congressional designation carrying the protections and prohibitions of the Wilderness Act.
Photo by Kamakshi Sahai.
It is country that is outside the cookie cutter houses and asphalt gridwork that cover growing patches of this planet. Humanity’s touch is lighter on wild country. It may be a mile off the coast of Maine. It may be on a two track somewhere in the middle of canyon country. It may be in that wood lot in the space behind your house. The point is, there is still something wild about it. Natural processes are dominant, your position in the food chain may be in question, and if it rains you may get wet.
I believe I first consciously encountered wild country at a summer camp I went to as a child up on Cape Breton Island in Canada. The camp was several miles down a dead-end dirt road and looked out over the Northumberland Strait. We did farm work and chores and played outside. I was scything rose bushes to clear a fence line when I speared a paper wasp nest. Out came the wasps. I dropped the scythe and ran as fast as I could down that fence line. I was breathing fast, my heart was pounding, adrenaline coursed through my body in an instant. It was real. My decisions mattered. There was no safety net. It was me and the planet and those wasps.
For us as a society, wild country gives us a place to wander in, to dream about, to disconnect, to live out our adventures. Native American culture is intimately linked to wild country—the belief that everything is alive and has its place and its power. European American culture formed largely around the concept of the rugged, self-reliant individual braving the privations of the wilderness.
In 1890 the U.S. Census Bureau declared the closing of the frontier. The coterminous United States were officially occupied territory. Isolated inholdings of wild country still existed but, over the next 70 years, American culture continued to gnaw away at these places. The pace slowed somewhat with the passage of a number of environmentally conscientious pieces of legislation in the 1960s and ‘70s. Somewhere in the last half century or so a greater number of mainstream American society began to appreciate wild country for itself without having to significantly “improve” it or take something from it.
For me, the rationale behind this cultural shift is summed up by a quote from Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac: “What avail are forty freedoms without a blank spot on the map?” Culturally, wild country provides us with a place to take some space from society at large and stand on our own.
At this time in our history, there are efforts afoot in our state and federal governments to transfer federally administered public lands to the states. This effort is primarily focused in the western states and Alaska, which are the repository of much of the remaining wild country in the United States. The governments of these states have tended to focus their land management strategies on extraction and agriculture rather than the protection of wild country.
I am concerned that such a transfer would eventually result in the sale of previously public wild country to private individuals to do with as they please. I am concerned that wild country not deemed of sufficient value for sale would be neglected and abused.
Federally administered public lands and the wild country protected under this mantle are a treasure to us as a society and as a species. Once lost, they are gone forever.
We are born out of wild country. Like every other thing on this planet, we came into existence out of space dust that congealed some 5 billion years ago. We are as much a part of this planet as all other things. Wild country is the source of our existence, and our dependence on its natural processes is integral to our survival.
To learn more about how public land is managed near you, you can visit one of these sites:
Topics: Environment, public lands, wilderness
