Varieties of Wilderness Experience

A reading of most wilderness literature seems to give us two basic messages. First, wilderness is fun, a place to hike and climb, canoe, camp, sail, ski, work out. Stores are full of stuff to get you out there to enjoy it. Ads and brochures abound offering super-eco tours into the silent, secret, remote and romantic places around the world. Fishing and hunting are a wonderful antidote to the dreary monotony of everyday working life. Thank god for parks and trails and wilderness! Nothing wrong with that.

The second theme is that wilderness is in danger, everywhere. Along with danger to wilderness comes danger to habitat and wildlife. But we humans are the big losers and it is going to get worse before it gets better. What to do about it? The LPF has been and will continue to stress this theme. Nothing wrong with that either.

However, my own experience is that wilderness is not a palette of two primary colors. How boring. On the contrary, wilderness is rich with variety, with color and light like a Van Gogh, shadowy and muted like a Rembrandt. It is an experience rich in sounds, sights and smells, feelings, emotions and ideas, the sort of thing Sig Olson wrote about.

Readers write to me about it. "We enjoyed the serenity of Listening Point." "Such written thoughts by Sigurd have been influential in my conclusion that we must reenter the silence, remain speechless, and be born again."

If there is anything we must respect in life, it is surely that which comes from the heart. Whatever else Listening Point stands for, it verges for many on the sacred, no small thing in these prosaic days of politics and trade.

We could call this the third dimension of wilderness experience, which is about spirituality and the heart. For many, this may be the most important dimension for Listening Point and the Sigurd Olson heritage.

What The View is all about then is to try to feature the widest range possible of wilderness experience and meaning starting in this issue with a startling map of the "Wild Places of the Earth," some data to show where and how much wilderness is left, and a few words about Africa. I like it because it shakes up my fixed ideas like a kaleidoscope.

The Third World has a bad image for many things, but just a glance at the map tells us that it is where most of the wilderness is. By our western and northern standards, the US is a wilderness wasteland, nothing to brag about, while Africa and South America are treasures.

Speaking of Africa, I have reviewed Ian Player's beautiful Zulu Wilderness, a gentle and perceptive account of the birth of the wilderness movement in South Africa reminiscent of Sig Olson himself.

Changing the focus, "Closer to Home" looks at wilderness in a small place, introduces the Murie Center in Moose, Wyoming, and describes the wilderness spirit in Wisconsin.

Best wishes for a great spring and summer.