“Wilderness is a fundamental need of the human spirit” (by Edward Abbey)

“I am not an atheist, I am a terrorist. Be true to Earth.”

— Edward Abbey

Excerpt from the book Lonely desert (1968) by Edward Abbey, conservationist, writer, and environmental activist. A proponent of direct action against the techno-industrial system, his ideas inspired the creation of the radical environmental movement Earth First!

Wild nature: Wilderness — this word alone makes music.

Wilderness, Wilderness... We barely know what we hear when we say this word, but the sound it makes attracts anyone whose nerves and emotions have not yet been irretrievably stupid, numb, killed by the rut of trade, the frenzied race for profit, and dominance.

What gives this word so much magnetism? What does he really mean? La Wilderness Can it be defined in the terms of the official government sabir as simply “a minimum of five thousand contiguous acres of roadless zone”? This may be an essential basis in a search for definition, but it is insufficient; something else is at play here.

Let's say for example that the Wilderness evokes nostalgia, a justified, and not only sentimental, nostalgia for the lost America that our ancestors knew. This word connotes the past and the unknown, the fold of the earth from which we all came. He is saying something lost and something still there, something remote and intimate at the same time, something buried in our blood and nerves, something beyond us, something infinite. Pure romance, yes, but that's no reason to dismiss it. Without constituting the whole truth, the romantic vision is a necessary part of the whole truth.

But a love of wilderness is more than a thirst for what is always out of reach; it is also an affirmation of loyalty to the land, the land that gave birth to us, the land that supports us, the only home we will ever know, the only paradise we need — if only we had the eyes to see it. Original sin, the true original sin, is the blind destruction for the simple lure of gain of this natural paradise that surrounds us — if only we were worthy of it.

When I say paradise, I mean the Paradis, not the ordinary Heaven of Saints. When I write the word “paradise” I think not only of love apples and golden women but also of scorpions and tarantulas, flies, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, sandstorms, volcanoes, earthquakes, earthquakes, earthquakes, bacteria and ibex, bacteria and ibexes, cacti, yuccas, cockroaches, volcanoes, earthquakes, earthquakes, bacteria and ibex, cacti, yuccas, cockroaches, volcanoes, earthquakes, earthquakes, bacteria and ibexes, cacti, yuccas, cockroaches, volcanoes, earthquakes, earthquakes, bacteria and ibex, bacteria and ibexes, cacti, yuccas, cockroaches, volcanoes, earthquakes, earthquakes, bacteria and ibexes, cacti, yuccas, cockroaches, volcanoes, earthquakes, earthquakes, bacteria and ibex, bacteria and ibexes, cacti, torrents of mud and quicksand and, yes, to disease and to death and to the rot of the flesh.

Paradise is not a garden of bliss and unchanging perfection where lions lie down like sheep (what would they eat?) and where angels, cherubim and seraphim circle forever in stupid circles, like timepieces around an equally inept and laughable Immobile Engine. (Be careful. Pray only in a clockwise direction. Let's all have fun together.) This particular iconographic fantasy of a kingdom beyond time and space that Aristotle and the Fathers of the Church tried to trick us into has only encountered, in the modern era, disinterest and indifference to sink into the oblivion that it so fully deserves, while the Paradise that I am talking about and that I want to praise is still with us, it is the here and now, it is the real, the tangible, the dogmatically present land on which we stand.

Some adherents of stubborn realism would tell us that the cult of the wild is only possible in a context of comfort and safety, and was therefore unknown to the pioneers who subdued a half-continent with their guns, plows, and barbed wire. Is that true? Take the feelings of Charles Marion Russell, the cowboy artist, as transcribed by John Hutchens in One Man's Montana :

“I was called a pioneer. In my book, a pioneer is a man who arrives on virgin land, traps all the furry animals, kills all the meat animals, cuts down all the trees, melts the meadows in the stomachs of his ruminants, plucks out all the roots, and lays ten million miles of barbed wire. A pioneer destroys the world and calls his work civilization.”

Others who endured suffering and deprivation no less severe than those of the pioneers included John Muir, H.D. Thoreau, John James Audubon, and the painter George Catlin, all of whom travelled much of the country on foot and found something more than just raw material that could be exploited for money.

A sixth example, my favorite, is that of Major J. Wesley Powell, a Civil War veteran, a one-armed penguin, sitting in a wheelchair moored to the deck of the small wooden boat in which he led his courageous expedition through the unknown canyons of the Green River, Grand River, and Colorado River in which he led his courageous expedition through the unknown canyons of the Green River, Grand River, and Colorado. From the railroad town of Green River, Wyoming, to the mouth of the Grand Canyon in what is now Lake Mead, Powell's first trip lasted three months.

During this time, he and his men suffered a variety of unpleasant experiences, including the loss of a boat, the hard work of bringing their boats down by rope to cross the worst of the rapids, moldy flour and the shortage of meat, the shortage of meat, the extreme heat and cold, the extreme heat and cold, the disease, as well as the constant fear of the unknown, the uncertainty of success, the ever-present possibility of encountering at the turn of the elbow dangers even greater than any they had hitherto overcome. This psychological pressure finally proved too much for three of Powell's men; toward the end of their journey, these three left the expedition and attempted to return to civilization by land. All three were killed by the Indians. Powell knew the Grand Canyon Gorge as a terrible and dismal underworld, the scene of much physical and mental suffering for him and his men, but despite this, and in spite of everything that happened to him during his explorations, it was the mode of panegyric that came into his pen when he described this place:

“The splendors and beauties of shapes, colors, and sounds merge in the Grand Canyon—shapes unmatched even by mountains, colors that rival the most beautiful sunsets, and sounds that span the gamut from thunder to the tinkle of a drop of water, from cataracts to fountains...

You cannot embrace the Grand Canyon in a single view as if it were an unchanging sight in front of which a curtain could be drawn. To see it, you have to toil for months in its labyrinths. It is a region more difficult to cross than the Alps or the Himalayas, but with enough strength and courage, in a year of hard work, you can reach a concept of the sublime that you will never find an equal on this side of Paradise.”

No, wild nature is not a luxury but a fundamental need of the human spirit, as vital for humans as water and good bread. A civilization that destroys what little is left of what is wild, virgin, original, cuts itself off from its origins and betrays the very principle of civilization.

If the industrial man continues to multiply and expand the scope of his activities, he will succeed in achieving his apparent goal: to isolate himself from the natural and to shelter himself from it in a synthetic prison of his own manufacture. He will exile himself from earth and will finally experience, if he is still able to feel something, the suffering and pain that any irretrievable loss causes. He will understand what the imprisoned Zia Indians meant when nostalgia for their land made them sing:

My land over there,

Now I remember it;

And when I see that mountain in the distance,

So I'm crying

So I'm crying

Thinking about my land.

Edward Abbey