Wildness

This day shall go down in my personal history as the day William Cronon arrived and made an indelible impression on the way I think about wilderness... or wildness. Thoreau said "... in wildness is the preservation of the world." In Cronon's essay The Trouble with Wilderness (1996), he fears that humans' conception of what is and what isn't wild could destroy us. He begs us to rethink wilderness, particularly through an awareness of a "common middle ground" in the wild spaces we already revere, and also the backyard, the garden, the city.

"If wildness can stop being (just) out there and start being (also) in here, if it can start being as humane as it is natural, then perhaps we can get on with the unending task of struggling to live rightly in the world - not just in the garden, not just in the wilderness, but in the home that encompasses them both."

This blew my mind.

Cronon is making me look differently at my surroundings. My everyday walk from home to the ODY Library on the St. Lawrence University campus suddenly seems wild and mysterious as a hike in the back woods. Today I started collecting one fallen leaf from each tree I passed on my walk. Just as I might try to identify out there, so could I learn right here.