I think I've heard you say this before, that it's the mark of a sophisticated civilization to set aside a wilderness. Interesting contrast with the Marshall letter Wynn posted.
I'm thinking about going full Ed Abbey and dropping the "sophisticated." If there's no conscious effort to acknowledge the wild, then its not a civilization.
Do I understand correctly that many Indigenous cultures see little logic in this idea of wilderness set-asides? (Likewise, my point about Marshall was that he sees a "jagged wilderness" seemingly before an Alaskan civilization is consciously setting it aside...)
I think your understanding, which I share, is generally right. But the Marshall letter makes a point: which is that its about context. To its original inhabitants, Marshall's "jagged wilderness" was home, a place of which they were an integral part. And given what I think I understand about their worldview, so was everyplace they went, because they were there together and what was around them, especially the wildlife (but their perception of what was alive was not, I think, the same as ours), was related.
The civilization (Wiseman, AK = civilization!?) wilderness dualism that Marshall understands (he knew about designated wilderness in the Adirondacks and early USFS primitive areas) seems to me to be a function of reductionism or binary thinking (or however you describe it), which is I suppose an attribute (or maybe ailment?) of civilization.
You know way more about Marshall than I do and I wonder if you interpret anything you know about him as being, in some sense or another, spiritual?
I have said it before. Not sure I see the contrast with the Marshall letter. But I will say that people who live in/with/near the wild are often very sociable. Working in Big Horn County all those years ago, I learned that if we set up a planning meeting with the folks of the Paint Rock country, it would take me a half hour or more to be able to lock up the school and leave. They enjoyed every excuse to get together. Probably, at least I think, because most of them worked alone so much of the time.
Coincidentally today I read some words by and about Bob Marshall that you may find apropos—for example, this letter home:
‘Robert Marshall
Wiseman
Alaska
September 23, 1930
Dear Family et al:
And here I am, back again at Wiseman, after four ideal weeks
of exploration in the jagged wilderness between here and the Artic Divide. But this is the wrong end of my tale on which to begin.
Logically it commences on the afternoon of August 25 when
we took off from the Fairbanks flying field. We, meant Clara Carpenter (22 year old schoolmarm of Wiseman, returning from a visit outside), her big brother Lew (Wiseman miner), Al Retzlaf (my last year's partner), myself, Robbins (the pilot) and two goldfish which Clara was transporting to brave the Arctic winter.
As I'd taken the same 225 mile flight three times before there were few fresh thrills, except flying over the Yukon Flats (a vast plain, 40 miles wide and extending as far as the eye can see from 4,000 feet above it, just filled with a myriad of glistening ponds and the mile wide silver ribbon of the Yukon River) which is a fresh thrill each time and getting lost for a short while in a country in which there are five landing fields in 300,000 square miles. Robbins had only been into Wiseman once before, and the entire region north of the Yukon is so inadequately mapped that it's very easy to get mixed up. So when we came, flying
a little off course, to the place where the Jim, South Fork, Middle Fork, North Fork and Wild Rivers all come within a few miles of each other and all head in the same general direction we didn't know for a while which was which. It wasn't quite like being lost in an auto either, where you can stop and study the map at leisure, for here we were moving at 110 miles an hour and there wasn't a decent map anyway.
But pretty soon Lew picked out Wild Lake for which we were heading
and simultaneously Al and I recognized some of the topography of the North Fork which we had explored the summer before, so Robbins banked her sharply around and we returned to the Middle Fork of the Koyukuk which we had erroneously crossed.
The welcome awaiting us when we landed at Wiseman would seem
preposterous to anyone afflicted with the conventional notions about the stolid frontiersman. The instant I stepped out of the plane Martin Slisco, jovial roadhouse proprietor ran up and threw both arms around my neck. Little Willie English, seven-year-old Eskimo boy with whom I used to have hopping races last summer, was next and he jumped up and kissed me. Old Pete Dow, hard-bitten, cynical old sourdough of 32 Arctic winters, pretty nearly pumped my hand off and
his face was all cracked with smiles. And following them came all the others, for every soul in town, eskimo and white, was out at the field.
They greeted
me with everything from just a warm handshake and a "Well, Bob," to a regular pumping and a long conversation…’
Hmm? I think I believe that there is nothing as civilized as wilderness.
I think I've heard you say this before, that it's the mark of a sophisticated civilization to set aside a wilderness. Interesting contrast with the Marshall letter Wynn posted.
I'm thinking about going full Ed Abbey and dropping the "sophisticated." If there's no conscious effort to acknowledge the wild, then its not a civilization.
Do I understand correctly that many Indigenous cultures see little logic in this idea of wilderness set-asides? (Likewise, my point about Marshall was that he sees a "jagged wilderness" seemingly before an Alaskan civilization is consciously setting it aside...)
I think your understanding, which I share, is generally right. But the Marshall letter makes a point: which is that its about context. To its original inhabitants, Marshall's "jagged wilderness" was home, a place of which they were an integral part. And given what I think I understand about their worldview, so was everyplace they went, because they were there together and what was around them, especially the wildlife (but their perception of what was alive was not, I think, the same as ours), was related.
The civilization (Wiseman, AK = civilization!?) wilderness dualism that Marshall understands (he knew about designated wilderness in the Adirondacks and early USFS primitive areas) seems to me to be a function of reductionism or binary thinking (or however you describe it), which is I suppose an attribute (or maybe ailment?) of civilization.
You know way more about Marshall than I do and I wonder if you interpret anything you know about him as being, in some sense or another, spiritual?
I have said it before. Not sure I see the contrast with the Marshall letter. But I will say that people who live in/with/near the wild are often very sociable. Working in Big Horn County all those years ago, I learned that if we set up a planning meeting with the folks of the Paint Rock country, it would take me a half hour or more to be able to lock up the school and leave. They enjoyed every excuse to get together. Probably, at least I think, because most of them worked alone so much of the time.
Coincidentally today I read some words by and about Bob Marshall that you may find apropos—for example, this letter home:
‘Robert Marshall
Wiseman
Alaska
September 23, 1930
Dear Family et al:
And here I am, back again at Wiseman, after four ideal weeks
of exploration in the jagged wilderness between here and the Artic Divide. But this is the wrong end of my tale on which to begin.
Logically it commences on the afternoon of August 25 when
we took off from the Fairbanks flying field. We, meant Clara Carpenter (22 year old schoolmarm of Wiseman, returning from a visit outside), her big brother Lew (Wiseman miner), Al Retzlaf (my last year's partner), myself, Robbins (the pilot) and two goldfish which Clara was transporting to brave the Arctic winter.
As I'd taken the same 225 mile flight three times before there were few fresh thrills, except flying over the Yukon Flats (a vast plain, 40 miles wide and extending as far as the eye can see from 4,000 feet above it, just filled with a myriad of glistening ponds and the mile wide silver ribbon of the Yukon River) which is a fresh thrill each time and getting lost for a short while in a country in which there are five landing fields in 300,000 square miles. Robbins had only been into Wiseman once before, and the entire region north of the Yukon is so inadequately mapped that it's very easy to get mixed up. So when we came, flying
a little off course, to the place where the Jim, South Fork, Middle Fork, North Fork and Wild Rivers all come within a few miles of each other and all head in the same general direction we didn't know for a while which was which. It wasn't quite like being lost in an auto either, where you can stop and study the map at leisure, for here we were moving at 110 miles an hour and there wasn't a decent map anyway.
But pretty soon Lew picked out Wild Lake for which we were heading
and simultaneously Al and I recognized some of the topography of the North Fork which we had explored the summer before, so Robbins banked her sharply around and we returned to the Middle Fork of the Koyukuk which we had erroneously crossed.
The welcome awaiting us when we landed at Wiseman would seem
preposterous to anyone afflicted with the conventional notions about the stolid frontiersman. The instant I stepped out of the plane Martin Slisco, jovial roadhouse proprietor ran up and threw both arms around my neck. Little Willie English, seven-year-old Eskimo boy with whom I used to have hopping races last summer, was next and he jumped up and kissed me. Old Pete Dow, hard-bitten, cynical old sourdough of 32 Arctic winters, pretty nearly pumped my hand off and
his face was all cracked with smiles. And following them came all the others, for every soul in town, eskimo and white, was out at the field.
They greeted
me with everything from just a warm handshake and a "Well, Bob," to a regular pumping and a long conversation…’
Now THERE's a cinematic universe. :)