Wild Ideas

254 Pages·1995·14.456 MB·English

by  David Rothenberg

WILD
IDEAS
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WILD
IDEAS
David Rothenberg
editor
University of Minnesota Press
Minneapolis
London
Copyright 1995 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
Chapter i was first published in slightly different form as "Wildness, Wise Use, and Sustainable
Development," Environmental Ethics 16, no. 3 (1994): 227-49, copyright R. Edward Grumbine;
chapter 10 is reprinted by permission of Arcana Editions, Ontario, Canada; chapter 11 is
reprinted with modifications from Tom Wolf's Colorado's Sangre de Cristo Mountains (1995) by
permission of the University Press of Colorado.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,
or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Every effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyright material in this book.
The publishers ask copyright holders to contact them if permission has inadvertently not been
sought or if proper acknowledgment has not been made.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wild ideas / edited by David Rothenberg.
p. cm.
Includes the results of the 5th World Wilderness Congress held in
Tromso, Norway in September 1993.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-8166-2614-6 (he). — ISBN 0-8166-2615-4 (pb)
i. Nature conservation—Philosophy—Congresses. 2. Ecology—Philosophy—
Congresses. 3. Wilderness areas—Congresses. 4. Wildlife conservation—Philosophy—
Congresses. I. Rothenberg, David, 1962- . II. World Wilderness Congress
(5th : 1993 : Tromso, Norway)
QH/5.A1W528 1995
333-7'2'oi—dc20 94-49620
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
Contents
Illustrations VII
Vance Martin
Foreword IX
David Rothenberg
Introduction Wildness Untamed: The Evolution of an Ideal XIII
I WHOSE WILD IDEA?
R. Edward Grumbine
1 . Wise and Sustainable Uses: Revisioning Wilderness 3
Denis Cosgrove
2 . Habitable Earth: Wilderness, Empire, and Race in America 27
Max Oelschlaeger
3 . Earth-Talk: Conservation and the Ecology of Language 42
II CROSS-CULTURAL WILD
Marvin Henberg
4 . Pancultural Wilderness 59
Lois Ann Lorentzen
5 . Reminiscing about a Sleepy Lake: Borderland Views of Women,
Place, and the Wild 71
Douglas J. Buege
6 . Confessions of an Eco-Colonialist: Responsible Knowing
among the Inuit 81
III THE ART OF THE WILD
David Abram
7 . Out of the Map, into the Territory: The Earthly Topology
of Time 97
v
VI . Contents
Irene Klaver
8 . Silent Wolves: The Howl of the Implicit 117
David Rothenberg
9 . The Idea of the North: An Iceberg History 133
R. Murray Schafer
10 . The Princess of the Stars: Music for a Wilderness Lake 150
IV THE WILD REVISED
Tom Wolf
11 . Beauty and the Beasts: Predators in the Sangre de Cristo
Mountains 163
Robert Greenway
12 . Healing by the Wilderness Experience 182
Andrew Light
13 . Urban Wilderness 195
David Rothenberg
Epilogue: Paradox Wild 213
Contributors 219
Index 221
Illustrations
page
xn Grand Canon. Reproduced from Stanley Wood, Over the Range to
the Golden Gate. Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 1901.
26 The Ptolemaic Ecumene (the habitable earth, windheads, and sons of
Noah, with monstrous races out of frame to the left). Reproduced
from Hartmann Schedel, Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493.
116 Black-and-white woodcut by Hans Gerhard S0renson.
132 Reproduced from Julius Payer, Die dsterreichisch-ungarische Nord-
pol-Expedition in den Jahren 1872-1874. Vienna: Alfred Holder, 1876.
162 Sangre de Cristo Range. Reproduced from Stanley Wood, Over the
Range to the Golden Gate. Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 1901.
194 Adam David Clayman, In the Urban Wilderness. By permission.
212 Reproduced from Stanley Wood, Over the Range to the Golden Gate.
Chicago: R. R. Donnelley & Sons, 1901.
VII
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Foreword
In the arena of international nature conservation, no concept is fraught with
more differences in personality, policy, and particularity than is wilderness.
Yet, is there anything more important? Wilderness is our original home, our
genetic mother, our biological lifeline, our earthly father, and our future se-
curity. It is both the bosom that nourishes us and the stick that ultimately
corrects our misbehavior.
Therefore, the World Wilderness Congress (WWC) was founded in 1977
upon the understanding that a healthy and sane human society is impossible
without wilderness, and that the answer to saving wilderness—for our secu-
rity or for its own sake—lies in nations, people, and professions cooperating
together. The WWC's rationale is, simply, that wilderness conservation must
integrate cultural, professional, and political differences. To integrate such
differences, one must first listen to his or her colleagues, friends, and adver-
saries, understanding where they are coming from, what they are made of,
and in what direction they are heading. From this integration emerges effec-
tive action.
Hence the critical importance of wilderness philosophy to international
nature conservation. It helps clarify our origins, establish our identity, dis-
cern our various relations to nature, and set our direction. Without this
philosophical core, international conservation policy will be ineffective, and
shift with the vagaries of politics while held captive by the trepidation of
economics.
As a result, the WWC has always placed philosophy on an equal footing
with science, management, economics, and education, and has helped es-
tablish credibility for a holistic approach to environmental problem solving.
Through five meetings over sixteen years—in South Africa (1977), Australia
(1980), Scotland (1983), the United States (1987), and Norway (1993)—the
WWC has become a unique forum and platform for international action in
nature conservation, allowing the public to meet and work with profession-
als from all sectors, from game rangers to politicians, scientists to poets,
managers to philosophers.
At the fifth WWC in Troms0, Norway, in September 1993, David Rothen-
berg convened an unusual and talented group of thinkers in a symposium to
investigate the idea of the wild. In the resulting collection, Wild Ideas, he
IX