Picture Essay

Picture Essay Analysis

What is wilderness. A dictionary describes it as a “mostly uninhabited area of land in its natural uncultivated state”. A young child may define wilderness as a forest, jungle, or any place with many trees. And despite the accuracy of both of these definitions, “wilderness” has had a much broader meaning throughout human history. Roderick Nash takes a biblical approach to the term in the first chapters of his book, Wilderness and the American Mind. In these opening chapters, Nash depicts wilderness as a place of spiritual tranquility, but also as a place of evil and wickedness.

In light of this photo essay, we’re going to look at how wilderness has changed in human thought over time, and how civilization has single handedly created, and destroyed, wilderness. According to Nash, civilization is what created wilderness. That is before civilization, there was no concept of wilderness, it was merely land. The photo essay does focus primarily on the American aspect of wilderness, but does include a couple of biblical references as well.

The first picture is an artist rendition of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The Garden of Eden represents wilderness in its most natural form; untouched by humans until the arrival of Adam and Eve. The biblical story does show the importance of wilderness in that time period. How these two people appear in the wilderness, and when they disturb nature they are subsequently punished for their sinful action by being banned from re-entering the garden. The picture itself shows Adam and Eve, both naked, reluctantly picking an apple from a tree, an obvious reference to the biblical tale. However, in the background of the picture you could see other people, even one in the apple tree between Adam and Eve. Which bring into question the extent of this wilderness around them. Why would the artist include other people when the famous story of the Garden of Eden clearly indicates the absence of any other human being besides Adam and Eve in the “garden”.

The next picture is another biblical one depicting Saint Joseph sitting by himself on a rock with a few animals near by, just thinking to himself. St. Joseph appears to be upset, but the wilderness around him appears to be just that, uninhabited by any human beings. The animals near him do not seem to be aware of his presence and the land around him is untouched. Relating this back to Nash and how wilderness represents a place of spiritual tranquility, St. Joseph has probably been through some stressful and emotional life event and went out into the wilderness to think it over. He isn’t bothering the wilderness and the nature isn’t bothering him. He is simply trying to find himself on the outskirts of society.

From there, the pictures progress to pre-colonial America. The first showing Native American’s hunting, not in the wilderness, but in their home. Because in accordance to Nash, there was no civilization in America at that time, and in the absence of civilization, wilderness cannot exist.

The next serious of picture is what America would have looked like before English explorers docked their ships off the shore. The fourth picture is a pre-revolutionary depiction of Manhattan Island in modern New York City. Upon observation you could see a few houses and ships, but for the most part it is barren land. The next picture is a photograph taken of Mount Rushmore before the construction of the presidential monument. The next three pictures are of the Grand Canyon, the Rocky Mountains, and the Arizona Dessert. All of these pictures have one thing in common, they all express the idealistic American wilderness. They all represent totally different regions in America, but none show any sign of human contact, thus presenting a sense of wilderness in its most clear definition.

In the next three pictures, we find the white man integrating itself into this “wilderness”. First we see what appears to be first contact between Native American and Europeans. The Europeans learning that their vision of wilderness is completely different than that of the people of the “new world”. The next image is of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark exploring the newly acquired lands of the white man. Followed by the famous painting by John Gast, American Progress, which shows westward expansion in 1872. This series of pictures show how the untouched land from the previous three images are being transformed from wilderness to homeland, through European exploration.

The next two images show how man’s interaction with wilderness can make it unrecognizable. The first being New York City today. A land that in a previous picture was barely touched by humans, becoming one of the biggest and busiest cities in the world in a matter of a few hundred years. This proves that in the hands of man, wilderness doesn’t have very long until it gets transformed into an industrial mess. Although one good observation from this photo, is of central park and despite the fact that we have become so industrialized, yet in the biggest city’s in the world still manage to treasure this huge park right in the center of it. It does say a lot about what nature and the idea of wilderness still says about us as a society today. And the next picture of Mount Rushmore as it appears today in an almost unrecognizable state as it did in the first photo. The producer of that work however, President Theodore Roosevelt, did take environmental issues into consideration and organized the national park system. Which takes us to the next photo of Yellow Stone National Park. Theodore Roosevelt, one of the greatest minds in American History, knew how important preserving American Wilderness was to our country and set aside this area of land as one that should see very little human contact and be deemed the first National Park in the world. In this picture we can see a open region free from human contact with a few buffalo grazing in the foreground.

The last picture takes us in a different direction. It shows what happens to wilderness when left in the hands of unappreciative, selfish people. This picture shows a Redwood Tree in California, just one of many, that was carved out in such a way to create a tunnel for passing traffic just to save literally two seconds of driving to go around the tree rather than through it. This is an absolute disgrace to the American wilderness. Some trees need to be chopped down to create room for structures, or for other resources, but to do this to a tree because it was a minor inconvenience to drive around it is unacceptable.

This photo essay demonstrates how people have gone from viewing the wilderness as a sacred place in the Garden of Eden, to totally playing the role of god to cutting right through it in modern California in a matter of a few thousand years. Man’s time on earth is limited, and like most species that came before us will most likely one day become extinct as well. Individually, we are here for just a short time, but our footprint is left on earth forever.

Summaries

Nash (8-9) 
In the opening chapter of Wilderness and the American Mind, Nash describes wilderness as mans greatest evil and the complete oposite of paradise.  He discusses how man needs to take control of the land through deforestation and raising crops.  This process was familiar to early english explorers and ultimately shaped how settlers were able to survive in colonial america. Man has definitely come a long way from such primative thought however.  We've gone from viewing the wilderness as an evil setting to embracing it and trying to preserve it in just a few hundred years.  Because it is indeed civilization that creates wilderness.

Merchant (132-133)
Carolyn Merchant takes a different approach in her first chapter regarding wilderness.  Tracing wilderness back to a time period even before english settlement of the new world.  She takes wilderness from a biblical perspective and the first wilderness known to man, "the garden of eden".  She pokes holes in the christian religion when she recalls the counts of Benjamin Franklin and his recollection of english explorers interaction with native americans.  How we told them the biblical story of the garden of eden and they responded in the only way they knew how.  By describing themselves as one with wilderness, that this is how they always lived and need to live in order to survive without having some spiritual being prosecute them for their actions. 

Nash (25)
Nash describes the discovery of the New World as a notion to Europeans that an "earthly paradise" lay somewhere to the west.  A place bountiful of "fabulous riches, a temperate clime, longevity, and garden-like natural beauty".  Europeans embraced the new world because it opened new doors for them.  Not only from an economical stand point, it also opened their eyes to something which they typically secluded themselves from the past.  The enviornment was hostile to the explorers at first because they werent use to such conditions, and subsequently many didnt make it through the first winter.  But later expansion westward, and experimenting with different crops made the weary explorers turn heads in the old world.

Biblical Depictions

Biblical Depiction of Wilderness

To fully understand the term wilderness in the sense of a definition, one must first locate the origin of the word.  As Nash described it, Wilderness "designates a quality that producesa certain mood or feeling in a given individual and, as a consequence, may be assigned by that person to a specific place".  This explanation directly relates to the biblical interpretation of a place where people are in spiritual tranquility as opposed to the grievences of civilization.  Afterall, wilderness cannot exist without the establishment of civilization. 
Nash also referenced how the term wild in the Old English as a description of "creatures not under the control of man".  Basically any land in its natural state, such as the Garden of Eden before Adam and Eve arrived there.  Once man call this place home, it loses its wild characteristic.

Defining Wilderness

The central focus of the picture is of course the steam engine chugging throught the valley.  Which is what the American Wilderness has transformed into.  Take away the train and you have the ultimate vision of wilderness. The rugged mountain in the distance, free from any human contact.  Then off to the right is a sort of pine barrens that also appears to be free from human habitat.  But we must take into consideration the train as well.  From the Atlantic to the Pacific, the enitre United States of America looked like the backround of the picture.  But through the years, people have devloped the land into cities and towns by way of deforestation and wilderness deconstruction.  And unless the federal government designates more natural wilderness that may not be industrialized, the rest of the country is just going to be a steaming pile pollution and garbage.  The wilderness is something to be treasured and valued in my opinion.  In a hundred years from know, whats is the youth going to explore and find themselves if all we have is city streets.  Like the people on this tratin, it is important to explore the wilderness around you, but not to go as far as industrializing every last area of the country.