“Absolute wilderness is those boundless places in the eye of the mind of the beholder where no human footprints can be found and for which all those enter there and become lost have no hope of rescue. Only the most reckless trapper or sibylline shaman venture into the wilderness, as a pebble falls to the bottom of the deepest pool, in the hope of returning to civilization with a fortune in furs or a secret wisdom or allegory thereof. Long before crass and foppish adventurers claimed the wilderness it had already fallen to a more mythopoeia mob for which survival was merely one of many options.
“Wilderness exists today, as always, mainly in the mind’s eye. Once long ago it was always just out there beyond the last black stump. Actually, it still is.
“Today it is called Mars or the mid-ocean ridges.
“And, humankind, as always, has little stomach for it.”
Beyond Darwin, Northern Australia, Photographed October 3, 2005
————–
part 1 http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000797.html
part 2 http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003015.html
part 3 http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003044.html
part 4 http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003104.html
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Nice photo Jennifer. Very soothing.
With Phoenix on Mars (along with Rover et al) and bottom trawling, Alvin, submarine cables etc skimming the mid-ocean ridges, I doubt you’ll find wilderness there either. Perhaps Wes has a point, and wilderness is mainly in the mind’s eye – to be a stranger in a strange land for a fraction of a second and create an other world where what is familiar and drab and safe is fleetingly unrecognisable yet beckons like a siren’s song. A place like home yet a place like no other.
Any discussion regarding the concept of wilderness reminds me of the great conservation battles from the sixties and seventies where campaigners were forced up against established practices with legal definitions and terms protecting corporate style progress.
We suddenly had disputes over the wisdom of free enterprise and restricted access everywhere including our cities, rural regions and extremely remote places that had to end up in a series of long court hearings. After the euphoria at national level surrounding the building of the giant snowy hydro scheme these major projects started to decline in the public eye.
The limits of tolerance started to emerge with the proposed flooding of Lake Pedder in Tasmania, further coastal destruction with increased sand mining of Fraser Island off Queensland and increased access to the high country in Victoria and NSW by various organizations. Perhaps I should add the desert regions too, however lets open up a discussion about “wild” versus “heritage” re the now historic Lake Pedder case.
http://soer.justice.tas.gov.au/2003/image/544/index.php
http://www.airviewonline.com.au/index.php?cmd=catdetails&cat=3689
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/threatened/species/pedder-galaxias.html
Given remote areas should be wild how do we cope with the demands at the top of Mt Everest?
With the Green “deep ecology” hounding claims of what is “true” wilderness, one has to wonder whether “true wilderness” is a branch of solipsism… or a physical place where solipsism is irrelevant. A place where nothing as intrusive as a photograph is available, because no carbon footprint was left behind.
It may be that, if you are truly, deeply “green”, the truest natural beauty is that which is never seen.
We must also look at how we appoint people to assess the value of “wilderness”.
“The essence of a wild place cannot be measured by its remoteness, its high peaks or uninhabited areas. Wilderness is a feeling; an experience that each one of us finds within himself” – Mike McKevey “Cradle Country” 1976.
It was the private work of individuals like Gustav Weindorfer (Austrian) and Olegas Truchanas (Lithuanian) that first drew my attention to the value of wilderness.
“Born in Austria in 1874, Gustav Weindorfer came to Australia in 1900. He met Kate Cowle in Victoria and they both moved to Tasmania where they married in 1906, spending their honeymoon on Mount Roland.
They bought a 100 acre farm at Kindred and settled down to farming. In 1909 Weindorfer and Charlie Sutton camped at Dove Lake and on the 4th of January 1910 Gustav, Kate and Ronnie Smith climbed Cradle Mountain. Kate Weindorfer thus became the first white woman to climb Cradle Mountain.
According to Ronnie Smith, as they rested on the 1545 metre summit Gustav Weindorfer proclaimed “This must be a national park for the people for all time. It is magnificent, and people must know about it and enjoy it.”
Gustav Weindorfer bought land in Cradle Valley in the late summer of 1910. In 1912 he started building his alpine chalet Waldheim, which means “forest home” and received his first guests in late 1912.
Kate Weindorfer died in April 1916 and Gustav Weindorfer died in May 1932, but during his lifetime his vision of a National Park became a reality when in 1922 an area of 158,000 acres from Cradle Mountain to Lake St.Clair was proclaimed a “Scenic Reserve and Wildlife Sanctuary.”
http://www.cradlehighlander.com.au/cradle-mountain-history.html
“If we can accept the view that man and nature are inseparable parts of the unified whole,” said Truchanas in 1971, “then Tasmania can be a shining beacon in a dull, uniform and largely artificial world.” – Playing with forest politics, article The Age 2003
http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3885846
http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A160499b.htm
There is another aspect, our permission to access and advertise wilderness.
Perhaps to put into context Gavin’s tales of Tasmania’s achievements in wilderness conservation, the map available at http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/publications/strategy/pubs/tas-state-party-report-att-e.pdf is worth a look.
Speaking of wilderness Schiller, your references concerning Arctic seals adapting to a life on rocks and dirt and sand and so forth have not materialised. When can we expect to read something that backs up your claims? I’m sure you will want to set the archives and seal biologists straight.
At its heart ‘wilderness’ is a value judgement. As poor old Hawking had to concede nothing is destroyed, it just changes appearance. Wilderness is an appearance which is judged by some to have a superior aesthetic to the appearance of things which have had the human hand upon them. In this respect the ‘wilderness’ issue is a small but still substantial element of the AGW debate, which has its essence in an assumption of natural superiority. But ‘wilderness’ is more than saying that nature is superior to humanity; it is also saying only a superior human can appreciate that nature is superior. That is, no matter what sophistic context you place on the meaning of ‘wilderness’ you can never get away from the fact that an aesthetic of ‘wilderness’, and indeed nature as a whole, can only be realised from the disconnected reality of a civilised vantage point which has kept ‘wilderness’ and nature at arm’s length. Humans who live according to the survival dictates of ‘wilderness’ have no time for generating an aesthetic about it beyond paganistic invocations. For the primitive, ‘wilderness’ would be designated out of fear rather than decadence.
Interesting points. I think the most neglected attribute of wilderness is one’s remoteness from help if it is needed. There can be no concept of wilderness whilst one still has mobile phone reception. It cannot be experienced from a 4 wheel drive, unless that 4WD is out of petrol.
And this raises the question of whether one can actually experience wilderness on a full stomach. Or rather, on a stomach full of food that you have brought with you.
I think most people who have come close to experiencing wilderness would agree that one cannot merely “see” it or “do” it, one must experience wilderness. And the only way to properly experience wilderness is to actually be part of it. To take one’s chances at both obtaining food from the wilderness and also risking becoming food for the wilderness.
For only then can one exist in the same emotional state as the wildlife that share the same space. Only then can the full suite of emotional responses be attached to the landscape. The fear of being eaten, alone, the anxiety of where the next feed will come from, the frustration of insufficient shelter, the grinding aggravation of persistent cold wind or physical discomfort, are the very things that drive the intensity of the pleasure of a good fire, out of the wind, in safety, under an overhanging rock, with a splendid view and full stomach, shared with good company.
The more we insulate ourselves from the former, the more we deny ourselves the pleasure of the latter. And the higher the threshhold of satisfaction becomes.
It is the very opposite of consumerism, status symbolism or trophy travel and the very antithesis of popping a pill or squirting something into your arm.
Very true Ian. There are friendly wildernesses where you can survive longer but it’s the hostile ones that really bring it home to you.
Wilderness is reality.
Ian: The question of our isolation is resolved when the silence is shattered by a 2 stroke working hard in the distance. Does anyone have permission to shatter the natural solitude from afar?
Four wheel drive enthusiasts and trail riders have the capacity to carry almost anything in and out of their target areas but we are stuck with the questions regarding a continuous footprint from traffic in popular off road places including beaches. Generally we each carry some sort of beacon and it may only be a box of waterproof matches.
In capturing wilderness we need to have a sense of vastness from simply being in the surrounding landscapes of water, sand, rocks, forests and sky. Then there is the detail, things we find enhanced in colour after rain or seemingly closer under mist, the moss and squiggly trails left by other creatures, objects we can touch.
Getting politicians and executives close-up to appreciate our various wildernesses has been a major problem. Building a climate for a wider public appreciation of wilderness and a pivot for the media was less difficult however an upsurge in interest creates its own problems.
For me it was a case of finally flying over what I could not expect to walk in time to collect enough information to balance a personal perspective. Each time I asked my pilot to show me wilderness, they circled places they had walked into. We flew very close to Frenchman’s Cap, Mt Anne and Mt Wedge several times as this region in SW Tasmania was considered most at risk from road making, dam building and new forestry operations. These pilots flew many tourists to the center of controversy before they were temporarily grounded by federal aviation authorities in 1972. Public access and control can slip away on a whim with a blind government in charge.
These two links show the contrast before and after tourism that was thwarted by authorities till the original lake and its associated wetlands was fully inundated under many meters of stored hydro energy.
Note: IMO some slides in the latter page are likely to be late summer, early 1972.
http://bushwalk-tasmania.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&p=4830
early immages
http://www.lakepedder.org/images/index.html
Sorry Gavin, these images are nothing but interior decore for those who, having had a glimpse of something special, feel the need to tell the whole planet about it. The additional layer of meaning from being no longer present does not make it any more special than the glee captured on a toddlers face or the intoxication of a first romance. All of them were there, all were almost painfully exquisite, and all pass on, leaving a partial image to be misinterpreted by those who were not there.
In the real Lake Pedder, big fish ate little fish, some birds went hungry while others fed well, and it would be just as gone forever if it was covered by backpackers rather than water.
But one can’t help reflecting on the possibility that if it had been “saved” from both ecotourism and innundation, it would still be cheapened by the very acts of exclusion that were intended to protect it. Protect it for whom? Did the fish really care if the beach was unique? Do they still care?
Thanks Gavin. I enjoyed your post.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to tell the world about something beautiful. God knows you feel the need to tell everyone here unpleasantries Ian. Get past your personal attitude towards posters and reply to what they write, not who they are.
Unless the child whose face showed a momentary splash of glee is suddenly hit by a truck, or your lover is killed by cancer, your analogies are nothing by trivial pursuits to discredit what has been written. What “interior decor” plants and animals died in the process of hydroenergy? We are talking about the loss of whole ecosystems, not some anthropocentric, emotional twaddle.
You have totally lost the plot here, and must bring your pespective of what wilderness is back to your good self, the centre of the universe. It all gets taken back to your tired old arguments about consumerism, ecotourists, areas being locked up, government spivs, blah, blah , blah. Get out and smell the wild flowers Ian, just for the sake of smelling the wildflowers.
Feel better yet, Jennifer B? I don’t recall making any reference to self, nor to spivs, but given your past form who knows what a brain like yours could read into it.
And as for the tripe about a “whole ecosystem died”, would you care to list for us all the species that were there prior to the flooding so we can compare it with all the species that are there today?
You do accept that there are still many species using that location today, don’t you?
Wilderness, all that which is essentially wild by itself should seem to be timeless in our scale of memorable things. It should be enough to know that it is still there and not just captured in a wall print. Fate may allow some children to discover it again as it was.
As my elbow rests on battered copper tone Schwarzburger print from the original “Eldon Bluff” (with flying ducks) by W C Piguenit 1886, I can recommend that everyone glance at another work from his expedition to “Lake Pedder” and “Crossing the Picton”.
http://images.statelibrary.tas.gov.au/Search/Search.asp?Letter=P&Creator=Piguenit%2C+W.+C.+1836-1914
Establishing the “South West Wilderness” as a “Reserve” in Tasmania took quite a while.
However it’s your last chance to view “The flood in the Darling” 1890 at the NGA. It’s a brilliant insight to conditions in another wild place that we may have lost forever.
http://www.nga.gov.au/Exhibition/Turnertomonet/Detail.cfm?IRN=9445
Highly recommended viewing.
When you’re bareskinned, naked and hungry your future is measured in hours.
Wilderness can only be adored from a position of comfort. They were mutually exclusive prehistorically.
Half the world is still wilderness if we really want it. I can still surf an endless ocean waterfall in a storm with 5,000 miles of sea room and a wandering albatross at my shoulder telling me, “Relax, I do this for a living”, or paddle a kayak into the mangroves and eat with golden wallabies in full view of high rise buildings.
Man has been trying to escape the wilderness forever and with his refined anxiety is succeeding too well.
He knows in the back of his mind it also contains death and blowflies.
Gavin, the Darling will flood again dont you worry about that [just ask Luke].
The Diamantina floods regularly and it’s further west. 120 kilometers wide in full song.
We were taking a mob of bullocks to meet the drover and we had to swim them up to a kilometer between sandhills. The mob split on one swim and the second half turned back and refused to go any further.
Luckily it was a big sandhill with plenty of feed on it.
They arrived at the saleyards in Adelaide 6 months behind the leaders.