What is wilderness?

“Nature needs time for growing and sleeping, free from automobile fumes and massive tractors, away from the cacophony of snowmobiles and trail bikes. There are plenty of tamed wonders for all to goggle at through vehicle windows—we must also retain our wilderness areas where nature can develop in its own calm way and where only those humans who are prepared to walk and sweat a little qualify to go.”
—Sir Edmund Hillary, Nothing Venture, Nothing Win

Strictly speaking, a Wilderness Area in New Zealand is a legal classification for land. These areas have no tracks, huts, or motor access. You rely on what you bring with you. They generally cover at least 20,000 hectares and are surrounded by a buffer of other public conservation land. Our country has 11 Wilderness Areas, covering 3% of the land.

However, if we knock that uppercase ‘W’ down to a 'w', wilderness can be found in many more places. Each of us has a different perception of wilderness, and of nature.

In his popular essay The Trouble with Wilderness; Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature, William Cronon points out that by thinking of wilderness areas as pristine, we forget and insult the indigenous people who have dwelled there, for much longer than any national park has been ‘protected’.

Wilderness, argues Cronon, has long been the opposite of civilisation. It was a wasteland to be avoided, it was the sublime cathedral where you might meet God, it was the antidote to city life that brought you back to your roots (if you could afford the trip). But if wilderness, and by association nature, lives ‘out there’, and is not a place we are within, we’re less likely to feel responsible for the natural world. Out of sight, out of mind, as it were.

Of course, few places with rich biodiversity remain, and there are too many of us now to live lightly on the land wherever we like. So the ‘otherness’ of wilderness arguably has value. I’m reminded of Daniel Quinn’s excellent visual summary of our changing relationship with the wild, The Fence:

Wild moments may be found on a mountain top, on a walk along the beach, or in a quiet corner of a garden. The important thing is that we see ourselves as being inside nature, and don’t mentally fence it off.