Staying Wild May Save Us All
Adventures in Sustainable Living Podcast
Episode 34
Staying Wild May Save Us All
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast. This is your host Patrick and this is episode #34 which is called Staying Wild May Save Us All.
In this episode I want to first give an overview of how nature, wildness, and wilderness was actually a key factor in defining the American experience. It actually represented limitless opportunity and freedom. It fostered the self reliance and individualism that still runs deep in our culture to this day. And yet over time we have gone from wildness and wilderness to no sense of wild at all. But as you will soon realize, staying wild maybe the one thing that saves us all.
If I were to ask you to recall and list 5 of the best experiences in If I your life, or 5 of the most exciting times in your life, or perhaps 5 significant accomplishments in your life, would you be able to do it? Sit right now and take two minutes and see if you can quickly come up with a list.
I am one of those types of people that about every 5 years or so, I get in the frame of mind to re-evaluate what the heck I am doing. I ask myself if what I am doing is still working for me, and if not, what can I change. Consequently, I can easily come up with my list.
-Moving to Colorado
-Buying my first cabin
-My first trip abroad
-My acceptance into veterinary school and graduation of course
-Buying my off grid cabin property, which I still have.
-In fact, if I can add a number 6, I just celebrated my 25 year anniversary of purchasing that property.
I was enormously excited about all of these things because each one of these events marked a significant change in my life, a significant success or significant achievement. I can look back on each of these experiences and recall the excitement, anticipation, hesitation, fear, and even laying awake at night wondering if I had made the right decision. But the bottom line is that all of these events literally changed the direction of my life. In fact, each of these events was a defining point in my life for one reason or another.
Now I grew up down South in Georgia and Tennessee during some troubled times. When I was really young I had no concept of the turmoil and the cultural changes that were occurring at the time. I did not realize much of this, nor did I feel the effects of it, until I was a teenager. And it was because of all of this that I decided to move out of the South. Thus, my move to Colorado.
My decision to move to Colorado marked the first great adventure in my life. I knew I wanted to move out of the South but I had not idea where that was going to be. Once I had the money saved that I needed, I sat one day and open up the road atlas to look at a map of the United States. It was time to make a decision. My first thought was to stand back and throw a dart at the map and wherever it stuck is where I would move. Then I saw the state of Colorado. I had heard and read so many things about how pretty it was in Colorado, there were the Rocky Mountains, lots of hiking and lots of remote territory. I decided that was where I wanted to go.
And of course, being 18 years old and thinking I knew everything, I took off on this adventure having no friends in Colorado and no job. I possessed only my sense of humor, a strong sense of adventure, and the desire to just do something different. Having never really traveled, nor spent much time out of the South at all, to me driving west and leaving the state of Tennessee was just like going off into the wilderness. I had no idea what to expect, what I was going to see, and for all intents and purposes, I was in uncharted territory.
What happened soon thereafter is that I was working a construction job, I was very poor, and for about 6 months I lived completely off of beans and cornbread, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, ramen noodles, spaghetti, soup, cereal, and anything else I could buy that was dirt cheap. Of course I look back and laugh at it all now and I am sure that many of my listeners can relate to similar times in their own lives. But at the same time is was all very exciting and I felt as if I was living on the edge.
I moved to Colorado in 1979. Needless to say, I have witnessed numerous changes during that time. There has been an enormous amount of development and growth. Small, relatively isolated communities have grown together. Real estate prices have skyrocketed and the population has exploded.
And, to my great disappointment, one of my favorite local mountain passes was paved. Access to this pass used to be a 15 mile narrow, pothole filled road with access being only 6 months out of the year. The state widened the road, paved it and access is now extremely easy. The bonus is that there are a lot of great hiking trails at the top of this pass. But the last time I was up there I was standing on top of the hill above the parking area and I stopped counting cars at 300. Progress, so to speak has crept in.
But truly what has kept me in Colorado for so long is the incredible beauty of the mountains and the extensive wilderness areas and backcountry where you could wander off for days and never see a single person. It was the kind of thing that I loved then and still do to this day. I still enjoy wandering off to some little corner of the back country and finding a spot where there is no evidence of human influence.
But in reality, whether you realize this or not, this idea of nature and wilderness was a key factor in defining the American experience. It certainly was what drew me to Colorado in the first place.
The settling of the American continent truly started with Jamestown. The site of the first permanent English settlement was chosen on May 13, 1607 and it was to be called Jamestown in honor of King James I. From that point in time until 1890 the frontier was considered a place where Americans could extend their institutions and democracy.
The frontier offered a vision of nature, wilderness, uncharted dangerous territory. It represented limitless opportunity and freedom. In so many ways it defined the settling of America. It fostered self reliance, individualism, and the structure of a society that was a lot different than European culture at the time. In fact I would argue that this same individualism stills runs strong in our culture to this day.
But in 1890 the Census Bureau broadcast the closing of the western frontier. This bit of news was a distinguished event in American history. It was a turning point much like various experiences and accomplishes in my own life that I can point to and say “That was a defining moment”.
You have to remember that the frontier represented danger and limitless opportunity. But the closing of the frontier meant there were no longer any apparent tracts of land without settlers. For nearly three centuries the idea of nature, wilderness, and completely unaltered territory defined the American experience and that time was now coming to a close.
Whenever I think about this it reminds me of a time when I worked in a veterinary hospital in Conifer, Colorado. Conifer had very little development at the time so on my lunch breaks I would walk up on the hill above the clinic and sit in the forest. It was one of my favorite spots because there were numerous old growth trees. This was about 1999 I think. Anyway, some development was starting and someone bought the piece of property with these old growth trees.
A few weeks later I walked up the hill at lunch and many of these trees had been cut down to clear for a driveway. I was appalled and angry. I stopped at each tree truck and counted the rings. Each one of those trees were over 300 years old which meant they were little sprouts in the year 1700.
Did you know that Yale College was founded in 1701.
In 1702 and 1703 some of the New England States were being formed.
1706 is when Benjamin Franklin was born.
And to further put things into perspective, you have to remember that the western expansion did not begin in earnest for another 100 years. So these trees that were cut down simply to clear for a driveway were approximately 100 years old at the time Thomas Jefferson negotiated an agreement with France to purchase the Louisiana Territory for $15 million. And someone cut them down for a driveway.
You know I think about all of these things and then I think about the ways in which I have altered my own property. So, I purchased 46 acres in 1996. To be exact, it is 46.01 acres. I actually took out a tape measured to get an idea of just how much of that property I have altered in order to build the cabins, sheds, chicken barn, green house, and the driveway. It turns out that I have altered
So, we have gone from a huge expanse of wilderness, something that truly defined the American experience, to our modern time when finding large tracts of land with no substantial human imprint is almost hard to find. In fact, by the time the frontier was closed in 1890, wilderness was almost a thing of the past. By the end of 1920, half the population of the United States lived in cities. Farms and villages were rapidly becoming a place for factories. The pristine wilderness that defined our experience as a nation was slipping away. In many respects, we had gone from wilderness to no sense of wild whatsoever.
But as our wilderness and untouched land diminished, Congress had the foresight enough to pass the Wilderness Act which was signed into law by President Lyndon B Johnson on Sept 3, 1964. This law protected 9.1 million acres of federal land. And of course since that time, this idea of having protected lands set aside has constantly been attacked by various interest groups who seek to exploit the resources “ locked up” in there so to speak.
Even today, various special interest groups, businessmen, and politicians seek to protect what is theirs by opposing the reintroduction of species once lost. For example, in 1995 wolves were reintroduced to Idaho and Yellowstone National Park. The wolf populations have grown of course and in 2011 they came off the endangered species list. But just recently the governor of Idaho passed a law allowing the killing of up to 90% of the wolf population stating such things as predation on cattle and diminishing elk herds.
But there is not truth in this statement. Studies have proven that elk herds are at record numbers and the USDA found that between July 2019 and June 2020 only 130 cattle and sheep deaths have been confirmed wolf kills. Incidentally, there are around 2.7 million cattle and 210,000 sheep in the entire state of Idaho.
But the reintroduction of such species is of sorts an effort at re-wilding a place where previous keystone species were exterminated.
But such things make we wonder about this concept of wildness and wilderness. Indigenous people considered the nature around them to simply be their home. Europeans considered the New World to be “wild and savage”. A condition which they thought needed to be corrected so they could settle, colonize, harvest the natural resources that could be used and marketed.
In contrast to early Europeans, indigenous people lived within nature and were a part of it. The natural world even held spiritual qualities which required them to respect it. In so many ways, they were also at the mercy of the natural world. That is a plain fact due to the rise and fall of indigenous populations throughout history.
But Europeans had a different point of view. This wild and savage land was chaotic and cursed and needed to be subdued and civilized. From the very beginning there was a battle against the so-called savages as well as the wilderness. While some came to this new land to enjoy freedom and independence that was otherwise denied them, others came for riches. But none of them came with a sense that nature was their home. Nature was simply viewed as a commodity to be exploited. I would contend that such ideas have prevailed from the 16th century until today.
But, to some degree things started to change in the late 18th century and early 19th century when various writers, artists, and even scientist began to show an appreciation for nature and wilderness because they did not face it from a pioneer prospective. Among these people were the likes of John James Audubon and Henry David Thoreau. They spoke of the spiritual aspects of wilderness. Thoreau even stated that “In wildness is the preservation of the world.”
Although such ideas were somewhat radical at the time, the value of wilderness would soon be discovered by many American. And perhaps this was even fueled by a growing separation from nature as more and more people moved from farms and into the city. But I also think many people were starting to realize that subduing and thereby commodifying nature was directly leading to less desirable consequences such as environmental damage and species extinction.
But, let me ask a question at this point.
Do any of my listeners recall the concept of Manifest Destiny. This is a phrase that was coined in 1845, and it was the idea that the United States was destined to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism across the entire North American continent. This is what drove the 19th century territorial expansion and was used as a justification for the forced removal of Native Americans from their homelands.
Fast forward to the period of WWII and the Great Depression when many things in the United States was put on hold. But afterwards, there was a rapid increase in logging, construction and road building. Wilderness areas were rapidly decreasing. That was somewhat halted by the Wilderness Act of 1964. Soon thereafter the concepts of conservation biology emerged and scientist began to document species decline worldwide.
Even in the 1990s, critics of the wilderness areas stated that the “locking up of the land” was unjust and deprived people of the resources they needed.
Now here we are facing obvious climate change, drought, and fires of epic proportions. Two of the largest man made reservoirs in the United States that supplies millions of people with water are now drying up.
But, despite all this, the concept of re-wilding is actually gaining traction. What this concept encompasses is restoring an area of land to its natural uncultivated state. It is the reintroduction of plant and animal species and especially keystone species into a habitat from which it has disappeared in an effort to increase biodiversity and restore the health of an ecosystem.
And I would like to point out once again the issue of the wolves in Idaho mentioned earlier. That was an effort at re-wilding and has now been reversed.
There is no doubt that population growth will continue to place pressure on wild and wilderness areas, species extinction will continue, and we will continue to see the effects of climate change for decades to come. Most scientists agree that reducing our carbon emissions alone is not sufficient to mitigate climate change. Consequently, we must incorporate other measures.
Re-wilding restores ecosystems that have been modified by human disturbance and thereby restores the natural processes that provide all of us with clean air, water, food, medicine, and other important resources. It also reverses the degradation of ecosystems and biodiversity loss that is driven simply by human activity.
One of the true benefits of re-wilding is that it is a natural way to mitigate climate change. And while I was researching this idea, I came across an amazing example of this that I want to share. It you have ever been hiking and came across of peat bog, it is truly something you cannot negotiate. You just have to go around it. Incidentally, if you take the time to sit on the edge and look into the water, there are an amazing number of critters in there.
But anyway, little did I know that worldwide, peatlands are the largest natural terrestrial carbon store on the planet. Worldwide, the remaining near natural peatland areas store 42% of all soil carbon and exceeds the carbon stored in all other vegetation types, including the world’s forests. They also help to regulate water flow along coastal areas. They minimize the risk of flooding and drought. They provide food, fiber, and various products to help sustain local communities. Who would have guessed that lowly peat bogs are a keystone species
In fact, great effort is being taken in some areas to restore peatlands because they are such an important carbon store. Not to mention it is a natural process that can be accomplished at a fraction of the cost of other methods.
So, the true point of this episode is to simply introduce you to this concept of re-wilding and get you to thinking about the intrinsic value of natural areas and ecosystems that are unaltered by humanity.
The basic principles of re-wilding include using wildlife to restore food chains. It focuses on the recovery of natural ecological processes. These principles focus on the intrinsic value of all species. And if you really think about it, perhaps re-wilding could be a paradigm shift in the coexistence of humanity with nature. This concept of re-wilding could actually be a defining point in the future of humanity.
Whenever I am driving somewhere and I see a sign that says “elk crossing next 20 miles” I think to myself “only 20 miles”. Or a sign that says “No services next 60 miles” I think what if it were 360 miles? No one would come here.
I am also reminded of a time when I used to work for a hospital in North Myrtle Beach, SC. I remember going to the beach one day and seeing an area that was surrounded by broad yellow barrier tape, similar to the type of stuff that officers use to restrict access to a crime scene. Anyway, it was an area of about 500 square feet if that. There were numerous signs designating that particular area as a protected sea turtle nesting place.
I took a moment and looked up and down the beach front and all I could see were people and high rise condo complexes. I looked back at the sea turtle nesting site and thought “This is a joke, right?” Because if you were truly concerned about sea turtle nesting there would be no development for at least 10 miles up and down the beach front.
The point being is that we have to start giving something back in order to achieve a balance. We can’t kill off the wolves. Lowly peat bogs are actually a keystone species. We cannot look at wilderness as locked resources only to be commodified to our advantage. Because the key to our survival is actually using less and making every effort to conserve, preserve, and restore what we have.
In closing folks, please take the time to download the transcript of this episode so that you can take advantage of the additional resources that are listed there. They are really quite informative. And if you have enjoyed this episode, then listen to some previous episodes and subscribe to the Adventures in Sustainable Living podcast.
This is your host Patrick sighing off. Please join me next week for another exciting and informative episode.
Additional Resources
The benefits and risks of rewilding.
weds.unep.org peatlands rewetting
From no sense of wild to rewinding north america
Peatland Rewetting: Reversing the Environmental Impacts of Peatland Drainage
