In Defense of Wildness Part 2

Upon rereading "The Accidental Farm," I realized how angry it sounds. It's not that I'm against people moving here -- many of my nearest and dearest friends are "transplants." They move here for various reasons, come to love it, and contribute to the lifestyle and character of my beloved hometown in many ways. I could not imagine life here without them. It's the folks that move here to build big houses and create giant subdivisions that encroach on once-wild spaces -- that's who and what makes me angry. We longtime King County residents (and Pierce County residents too, for that matter) are also to blame for inaction. We didn't start managing growth until it became too late. Pugetopolis, sadly, already exists.

Emmett Watson was right. Seattle lost a lot of its character because city and county leaders did not manage growth effectively. The city I grew up in is not the city I live in now. And we still must protect places like Duvall, Monroe, and North Bend from being swallowed up by Pugetopolis.

Before I leave Pugetopolis for further musings on wilderness and wildness, there's one more thing I need to say. The "accidental farm" on the Redmond-Fall City Road is still there. It has not become a victim of growth.

A favorite quote of mine from a Mary Oliver poem is this -- "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your wild and precious life." Without a space for wildness, can my life truly be wild? Will the generation behind me grow up knowing nothing of wildness?

I am intentionally using the word "wildness" and not "wilderness" here. It's been six years since we discussed this in one of Don Snow's classes at Whitman, so my knowledge of the difference between the terms is a bit fuzzy. The Wilderness Act defines wilderness as "an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." Wildness is what we hope to find in nature -- places in which the ecosystem has been left intact. Wildness is in overgrown, fierce, deeply natural areas. Wilderness is the space we have set aside in order to experience wildness.

This is inherently problematic. Why do we need to set aside places to preserve wildness? Why do we need to control, manage, and use nature? By creating wilderness, we are making the wild into a commodity. There are a couple of problems with this. People hear "wilderness," and it becomes synonymous with "beautiful." And therefore they must visit. So it becomes a little less wild. But, on the flip side, we absolutely need to protect wilderness. Yes, we are commodifying the wild, but we need to protect it so there is something left for our children. If we do not set aside places for the wild, it will no longer exist.

There is a tension here. Wilderness lies in spaces untrammeled by man, yet to become a lover of wilderness and wildness, one must experience it personally. Ed Abbey, one of my all-time favorite authors, famously pulled up the surveyors stakes marking the road going through Arches National Park. He thought that national parks should be preserved for wildness, and not for people to visit. Yes, it's cool that we can drive up to Hurricane Ridge and go snowshoeing -- but should we be there? Up on Hurricane Ridge, there is a visitor's center and a parking lot. It is no longer wild.

I think it is very important for everyone to experience the wild. But I also think it is important to have places that we cannot get to. There need to be places on this planet that are so remote that we cannot find them. Yet we also need places we can go to be alone in nature. Those of us who, like Thoreau, seek solitude in the woods must go further and further out in order to do it. And so the tension remains.

Will we one day live in a world without wildness? And will this world also lack silence? There is a campaign to preserve the silent nature of Olympic National Park. It was started by a man who sought one square inch of silence (http://onesquareinch.org/) -- one square inch where human noises could not be heard. Airplanes and helicopters have altered the soundscape of our national parks quite dramatically. It is hard to be alone in nature and experience its sounds without hearing the drone of an airplane engine.

I realized in the gym today that the kids I work with may never experience this kind of silence, and it made me cry. My eyes started watering in the middle of my workout. True silence is one of the most beautiful things on the planet. And for me, it is a hallmark of the wild.

When I was 18, I took my very first backpacking trip in Utah's red rock canyon country. I woke up one night, and my ears hurt from the silence. The silence of that canyon was so loud that it invaded my very being. I sat up, filled with wonder, watching the stars, amazed by the sound of the absence of noise. The kids I work with will likely never experience this. And now I cannot -- I took a racquetball to the ear during my senior year of college, filling my silence with a high-pitched whining noise. I am so glad I got to experience silence.

Nowadays, kids are so wired that we have to remind them not to take their iPods out on a backpacking trip. And the world is so small and so filled with noise everywhere that silence is endangered, just like wildness.

Silence and wildness are both worth defending. We need wild spaces that exist on their own terms. Places that we can visit, but not stay. Places that are so remote that we do not know about them. Ed Abbey was mostly right when he wrote "The idea of wilderness needs no defense, only defenders." But he should have used a different word.

For it is the idea of wildness that needs no defense. Only defenders.