Life in the Woods

In the "life in the woods" department . . .  there is a fascinating account on the Smithsonian magazine web site of a Russian family that lived in a remote part of Siberia with no contact with other people for 40 years : they lived alone in the wilderness from the mid-1930s  until they were "discovere"d in 1978:

The Lykov children knew there were places called cities where humans lived crammed together in tall buildings. They had heard there were countries other than Russia. But such concepts were no more than abstractions to them. Their only reading matter was prayer books and an ancient family Bible. Akulina had used the gospels to teach her children to read and write, using sharpened birch sticks dipped into honeysuckle juice as pen and ink. When Agafia was shown a picture of a horse, she recognized it from her mother’s Bible stories. “Look, papa,” she exclaimed. “A steed!”

But if the family’s isolation was hard to grasp, the unmitigated harshness of their lives was not. Traveling to the Lykov homestead on foot was astonishingly arduous, even with the help of a boat along the Abakan. On his first visit to the Lykovs, Peskov—who would appoint himself the family’s chief chronicler—noted that “we traversed 250 kilometres [155 miles] without seeing a single human dwelling!”

Isolation made survival in the wilderness close to impossible. Dependent solely on their own resources, the Lykovs struggled to replace the few things they had brought into the taiga with them. They fashioned birch-bark galoshes in place of shoes. Clothes were patched and repatched until they fell apart, then replaced with hemp cloth grown from seed.

The Lykovs had carried a crude spinning wheel and, incredibly, the components of a loom into the taiga with them—moving these from place to place as they gradually went further into the wilderness must have required many long and arduous journeys—but they had no technology for replacing metal. A couple of kettles served them well for many years, but when rust finally overcame them, the only replacements they could fashion came from birch bark. Since these could not be placed in a fire, it became far harder to cook. By the time the Lykovs were discovered, their staple diet was potato patties mixed with ground rye and hemp seeds.

You can read more here.

The trouble with the trouble with wilderness

Bill Cronon's "The trouble with wilderness" is one of the most widely read essays in the field of environmental history. You might want to check out some of the responses it spurred. Here is a link to one, "The trouble with Bill Cronon's wilderness," by Samuel Hays:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3985060

But remember, the precis assignment does not include personal opinions--only a summary of Cronon's piece.

Saw this wall-painting in Gorumara National Park, North Bengal, India. I thought that this was another manifestation of the man vs wild, 'man should stay away from nature' ethos. India, for one, can hardly afford to pay homage to the wilderness ethic; even the most famous, secure tiger reserves and national park have large populations of indigenous people residing in the core, 'inviolate' areas. Hardly ideal conditions for propagating a wilderness area.

Cronon-bashing

Hey guys,

Check out this critique of Cronon's "The Trouble with Wilderness," written by "Guy Tal" on the Essential Landscape Web Journal:

http://scenicwild.com/serendipity/index.php?/archives/29-Why-William-Cronon-Doesnt-Understand-Wilderness.html

Anyone able to give a critique of his critique???


" Why William Cronon doesn't understand wilderness:

Someone recently sent me a link to a belabored diatribe titled "The Trouble with Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature" by Professor William Cronon of the University of Wisconsin. It was an enlightening read.Other than starting the article by failing to note or articulate the difference between Wilderness and Wildness (and thus completely missing the essence of the famous quote from Henry David Thoreau), Cronon's idea of Wilderness somehow manages to be out of touch with every single formal definition of the term, whether legal or common. His bombastic title and lengthy analysis all seem to revolve around the unfounded perception that wilderness advocates promote a notion that "the human is entirely outside the natural." This premise is patently false. No definition of the term excludes human presence or experience from the natural world. If anything, wilderness is defined by its relation to humans, and by excluding certain human constructs and activities, but never humans presence. The Wilderness Act of 1964 defines wilderness as an area "untrammeled by man", rather than an area where man has no presence or stake or experience.

To claim that wilderness excludes all human experience is like claiming that virginity excludes any romantic interlude between lovers, rather than very specific physical acts. It's like claiming that criminal laws excludes all freedoms, rather than specific deeds deemed to be harmful to society. It is, in essence, a gross mischaracterization, and false representation of what the term means to most of those who espouse it.

For such a contentious title, one would think a conclusion will be pretty self-evident, and yet you would have to look pretty hard to find out exactly what Cronon thinks "the trouble" actually is: "a flight from history" (really?), "an escape from responsibility" (huh?). In a way it seems he is trying to construct a fictitious point only to triumphantly tear it down and claim it is false. Wilderness activists are not trying to escape from responsibility - if anything they are trying to assert responsibility. They are pointing out all the spiritual and ecological values of restraining industrialization and sprawl so that the historic account of human-induced devastation serves as a lesson rather than something to ignore or escape. How easy it is to twist words and meanings to "prove" a point.

While searching through the article for "the trouble with wilderness" you may actually discover some trouble with religious beliefs, politics, racism, and a number of other far more blatantly flawed human perceptions than the modern idea of wilderness.

Would one not expect an educated analysis to begin with a clear and commonly-accepted definition and understanding of a concept before attempting to show "trouble" with it?

The Wilderness Society, founded by Aldo Leopold defines its mission in a single line:

"Deliver to future generations an unspoiled legacy of wild places, with all the precious values they hold: Biological diversity; clean air and water; towering forests, rushing rivers, and sage-sweet, silent deserts."

Read it again: deliver to future generations... they do mean generations of humans! Where exactly does Cronon get such warped perceptions as "a crude conflict between the “human” and the “nonhuman”"?

In my mind it was Edward Abbey that framed the real trouble with wilderness:

"The idea of wilderness needs no defense. It only needs more defenders." "


LM Note:

“Untrammeled. A key descriptor of wilderness in the Wilderness Act, untrammeled refers to the freedom of a landscape from the human attempt to intervene, alter, control, or manipulate natural conditions or processes to provide particular benefits.” — FWS Draft Wilderness Stewardship Policy, 2001