William Cronon's Critique of Wilderness as Cultural Construct

The Cultural Origins of Wilderness

In "The Trouble with Wilderness," William Cronon illustrates the cultural biases inherent in the very term "wilderness" and shows how those biases may be at the heart of the modern environmental movement. "The time has come to rethink wilderness," Cronon suggests (p. 379). Before the Industrial Revolution, the term wilderness referred to a barren wasteland — a place that was "deserted, savage, desolate" (p. 380). The wilderness evoked terror, not joy. By the end of the nineteenth century, due to shifts in cultural ideology as well as the effects of industrialism, the American concept of wilderness changed dramatically. The wilderness began to represent the opposite of barren wasteland and became a sublime, sacred center.

Early environmentalists like John Muir in fact referred to wilderness areas in spiritual terms. Speaking out against the destruction of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park, Muir claimed that the dam-builders were "temple-destroyers, devotees of ravaging commercialism" (p. 358). Muir described Hetch Hetchy as "precious and sublime" and, like other environmentalists of his time, used Biblical imagery to support his views. Cronon also shows how the use of Biblical imagery proves how deeply ingrained the concept of wilderness has become in the American psyche. The Bible presents two dualistically opposed views of wilderness: the Eden of the proverbial garden and the dangerous wasteland of the desert. It is precisely this dualistic worldview that lies at the root of the conflicts within the environmental movement.

Romanticism, Industrialism, and the Wilderness Ideal

Wilderness was, according to Cronon, a product of two converging eighteenth- and nineteenth-century movements: Romanticism and the Frontier/Wild West/Manifest Destiny spirit. "The two converged to remake wilderness in their own image," according to Cronon, "freighting it with moral values and cultural symbols" (p. 382). Romanticism, for example, saw nature as sublime — spiritually infused and permeated with divine energy. Wide open spaces away from city life were like churches and temples; for many, they were more sacred than any church or temple. For John Muir, who argued passionately against the destruction of Hetch Hetchy Valley, that part of Yosemite was "precious and sublime," and "the sublime rocks of its walls seem to glow with life" (p. 356). To destroy Hetch Hetchy and convert it into a reservoir was akin to destroying a temple. Muir's environmentalism solidly reflects the spirit of Romanticism at the heart of the early American environmental movement.

Part of the reason for the Romantic vision of nature was the increasing dichotomy between urban and natural life — between cities and forests. As industrialism created bigger cities with fewer trees, people longed for an "older, simpler, truer world" (Cronon, p. 384). Alice Hamilton shows the dark side of industrialism through her account of working with men afflicted with what she calls "industrial diseases" at Hull House (p. 402). Industrial diseases were those that resulted directly from unclean, polluted factory environments. However, Hamilton also shows how these diseases were psychological and social as well as physical. The pull toward profit forced men to work long hours away from their families. Ironically, Hamilton notes that factory owners preferred family men because they were more stable. The Industrial Revolution produced the dualism inherent in the concept of wilderness because it created deep rifts in the American psyche — rifts that are visible in Hamilton's writing.

Similarly, George Perkins Marsh refers to the "hostile influence of man" in creating polluted urban environments (p. 315). The pollution of the city forced people to pursue the wilderness experience and to seek solace in the silence of nature. According to Marsh, nature would have remained undisturbed and unchanged were it not for mankind's interference. In Marsh's imagination, the wilderness is the last bastion of pure, unsullied nature. "Wilderness" was created in response to the increasing encroachment of industrialized civilization, since "the white man has laid bare a vast proportion of the earth's surface" (p. 314). Having destroyed such a vast portion of the earth's surface, human beings needed to re-create wilderness. Industrialization awakened human beings "to the necessity of preserving what is left, if not of restoring what has been wantonly wasted" (p. 316). The dualism between human life and natural life in the American consciousness that Cronon identifies is clearly evident in the writings of George Perkins Marsh.

Marsh also writes through the lens of his own culture, arguing that "purely untutored humanity … interferes comparatively little with the arrangement of nature … the destructive agency of man becomes more and more energetic and unsparing as he advances in civilization" (p. 316). Given Marsh's use of the word "advances," his point of view is schizophrenic as well as dualistic. He states that "man alone is to be regarded as essentially a destructive power," yet at the same time claims that "he is not of her … he is of more exalted parentage" (p. 316).

The Frontier Spirit and Indigenous Displacement

Cronon also connects the revival of wilderness at the beginning of the twentieth century with the American frontier spirit. The frontier spirit and its attendant philosophy of Manifest Destiny offered European settlers a sense of entitlement to the lands they later deemed "wilderness." Exploring the frontier became, like the wilderness itself, a sublime experience through which human beings might connect with God. However, the frontier was anything but sublime, according to Cronon, who shows that "the actual frontier had often been a place of conflict" (p. 384).

The wilderness was the white man's invention — a conclusion that finds support in the writings of George Perkins Marsh. Marsh writes with awestruck respect for the frontier wilderness and claims that it is "the task of the pioneer settler" to preserve wilderness regions as best as possible. Marsh also claims that "man is everywhere a disturbing agent," something with which Cronon would disagree, on the grounds that the indigenous peoples of the Americas were not disturbing agents in their environments. Marsh's religious discourse, combined with his dualistic view of the relationship between human beings and nature, thus reinforces Cronon's central point.