What to you is "WILDERNESS".......???

[ColeyG]

The sad truth is that there are no corners of the planet that haven't been seen by humans and most have been impacted and changed in some way due to mans influence. Another sad reality is that there are even fewer places where feet haven't been on the ground recently, not to mention in the eons gone by. Many of these places may feel wild and be new to us, but they are certainly not untouched or unexplored.

For me wilderness is a place where I can be free from the impacts of man. Alone in the native wilderness that is. This can still be achieved, but it is getting harder and harder that is for sure. With mechanized access like Supercubs on bush wheels and helicopters, there is literally no such thing as inaccessible. Satellite based communication devices extend "the grid" to every nook and cranny on the planet.

The farthest you can get from a "maintained" road in the L48 is about 20 miles (as the crow flies). There are two corners of designated "wilderness" where this can happen, Yellowstone and N Cascades National Parks. Having spent time in and around each of these areas, they are certainly wild, but far from free from the impacts of man.

 

[Trap]

I definitely think Arctic National Wildlife Refuge fits my definition of what wilderness is and its one of my favorite places to hunt. Generally everywhere I sheep hunt is quite wild as well.

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I forgot the artic national wildlife refuge on my first post. I did a bush plane drop camp once in there that definitely fits my definition of wilderness

 

[Sourdough]

I think people on forums like his, when they reflect on this question, just naturally run it through the filter of "hunting". There are many places we hunted 50 years ago that later became National Parks, but I tend to not even remember them now.

Long ago I lived on (fifty mile long) Lake Clark, was great hunting then, now the wilderness is still there, you just can't hunt there.

 

[Carpenterant]

I think some people have a grandiose idea of wilderness as being a place where you’re the first to tread. I don’t hold that lofty of opinion, for me, wilderness is an area where I don’t see signs of humans

 

[Mtnboy]

I try not to complicate it too much....if it's designated a capital W wilderness then it's a wilderness...if it's not then it's not.

I guess I'm just a simple man

 

[jjohnsonElknewbie]

Wilderness to me is where most NonRes go to hunt elk... along with recent burn areas

Amen brother, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Getting away from the trespassers and road poachers competing for whitetails here at home was the best part.

 

[Sourdough]

I try not to complicate it too much....if it's designated a capital W wilderness then it's a wilderness...if it's not then it's not.

I look out my cabin window at country that few humans have set foot, and most of that was over "Hundred" years ago. It is game rich country, but very near impossible to access. Not classified as "Wilderness", just a small (relatively speaking) part of a Seven Million acre National Forest.

 

[Rokbar]

Middle of BFE.

Yes, the Sinai. The Jews wander there for 40 years. I was stationed there in the early 90s. Truly a wilderness.

 

[Zeke6951]

Being from east of the Mississippi River, my first trip to Colorado on an archery elk hunt, I thought the Wilderness Area we hunted fit the definition of wilderness. As I hunted the wilderness area I could imagine that I was the first white man to set foot in a particular basin or maybe a saddle between two peaks. As the hunt progressed I would sometimes be in awe of the "wilderness" and the a few steps later would find a couple of empty Bud Light cans. I even found what I think was a mounted wheel (with bearings, hub and all) off an aircraft. I guess a true wilderness is as rare as unicorns.

 

[Millertime30]

Growing up in Iowa my idea of wilderness was just finding somewhere you couldn’t see or hear roads, houses, or farming equipment. Pretty rare especially in northwest Iowa. I remember my first trip to Colorado as a teenager and I climbed to the top of a ridge at The Maroon Bells and looked out at the endless trees and mountains and my perception very quickly changed.

 

[AK Troutbum]

I consider probably over 90% of my home state to be wilderness, although I haven’t seen but a very, very small fraction of it.


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[thinhorn_AK]

I think people on forums like his, when they reflect on this question, just naturally run it through the filter of "hunting". There are many places we hunted 50 years ago that later became National Parks, but I tend to not even remember them now.

Long ago I lived on (fifty mile long) Lake Clark, was great hunting then, now the wilderness is still there, you just can't hunt there.

Lake clark isn’t 50 miles long and people who live in that area still can hunt the lake clark park.

 

[Marbles]

Man is just another animal. Beavers also have an outsized impact on their environment. The idea that man is not part of nature is ridiculous.

I think of wilderness as somewhere removed from modern civilization and harsh enough that skill and preparation are needed to survive.

 

[Sourdough]

Lake clark isn’t 50 miles long and people who live in that area still can hunt the lake clark park.

1. A Guide to Alaska's Lake Clark National Park​

   https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/national...
   Lake Clark, centrally located in Lake Clark National Park, is a 50-mile-long clear, turquoise body of water that is fed by glaciers, waterfalls, rivers, and streams.

 

[Sourdough]

Lake clark isn’t 50 miles long and people who live in that area still can hunt the lake clark park.

CLEARLY.............You have an intent to deceive the members here, or your pretty much clueless. ONLY if "BORN" with-in the park "BEFORE" it was a park, can a person hunt with-in the park.

 

[thinhorn_AK]

CLEARLY.............You have an intent to deceive the members here, or your pretty much clueless. ONLY if "BORN" with-in the park "BEFORE" it was a park, can a person hunt with-in the park.

Wrong again, I have friends who live in newhalen and get to hunt the park. They have taken sheep there. They were not born there. I have no intention of deceiving anybody.

Why do you write with all the quotations and capitalizations? It’s very strange.

 

[Billy Goat]

Wrong again, I have friends who live in newhalen and get to hunt the park. They have taken sheep there. They were not born there. I have no intention of deceiving anybody.

Why do you write with all the quotations and capitalizations? It’s very strange.

Likely cause he stuck in a cabin in the wilderness.

 

[Overthefalls]

Interesting conversation, I'm curious what y'all think about William Cronon's critique of the idea of wilderness in his essay "The trouble with wilderness"

His description of the wilderness as a myth summed up nicely here:

"The removal of Indians to create an "uninhabited wilderness" reminds us just how invented and how constructed the American wilderness really is. One of the most striking proofs of the cultural invention of wilderness is its thoroughgoing erasure of the history from which it sprang. In virtually all its manifestations, wilderness represents a flight from history. Seen as the original garden, it is a place outside time, from which human beings had to be ejected before the fallen world of history could properly begin. Seen as the frontier, it is a savage world at the dawn of civilization, whose transformation represents the very beginning of the national historical epic. Seen as sacred nature, it is the home of a God who transcends history, untouched by time's arrow. No matter what the angle from which we regard it, wilderness offers us the illusion that we can escape the cares and troubles of the world in which our past has ensnared us. It is the natural, unfallen antithesis of an unnatural civilization that has lost its soul, the place where we can see the world as it really is, and so know ourselves as we really are -- or ought to be."

I agree with Cronon's assessment that the wilderness myth because is problematic because it conveniently excuses us for how we treat the natural world around us on an everyday basis:

"We live in an urban-industrial civilization, but too often pretend to ourselves that our real home is in the wilderness. We work our nine-to-five jobs, we drive our cars (not least to reach the wilderness), we benefit from the intricate and all too invisible networks with which society shelters us, all the while pretending that these things are not an essential part of who we are. By imagining that our true home is in the wilderness, we forgive ourselves for the homes we actually inhabit. In its flight from history, in its siren song of escape, in its reproduction of the dangerous dualism that sets human beings somehow outside nature -- in all these ways, wilderness poses a threat to responsible environmentalism at the end of the 20th century."

He goes onto argue that reframing ourselves as part of nature, rather than separate will help better care for our world as a whole.

"We get into trouble only if we see the tree in the garden as wholly artificial and the tree in the wilderness as wholly natural. Both trees in some ultimate sense are wild; both in a practical sense now require our care. We need to reconcile them, to see a natural landscape that is also cultural, in which city, suburb, countryside and wilderness each has its own place. We need to discover a middle ground in which all these things, from city to wilderness, can somehow be encompassed in the word "home." Home, after all, is the place where we live. It is the place for which we take responsibility, the place we try to sustain so we can pass on what is best in it (and in ourselves) to our children."

To answer your question, I consider wilderness an experience rather than a place. When I feel more a part of the land, rather than separate from it (this can happen for just a few seconds or hours, even days. Interestingly, I have often experienced this "wilderness feeling" while spearfishing, which is definitely a place where I am an the alien.

NY Times Version: https://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/13/magazine/the-trouble-with-wilderness.html

Long Version: https://faculty.washington.edu/timb...erness/Cronon The trouble with Wilderness.pdf

 

[Sourdough]

I do have empathy for those who quest for wilderness experience.

I know that pain, I know that hunger, that longing. To know that there are treasures of peace and wisdom, if they can truly be comfortable alone in wilderness. There is a knowing that truth, clarity, meaning of life is out there. Wilderness can change a person. They become complete.

"The wilderness can change a man"

There is a real transformation that can metamorphose within a man who is alone in the wilderness. He can exit the wilderness fragile, very fragile; he is no longer sure where that which is himself ends and that which is not him

Everything is kind of fuzzy, and has a softness about it, all things appear slightly blurred to the eye, like after one has been crying, and it can be hard to distinguish where one object stops, and another object starts.

He feels weak and vulnerable but centered. In fact, he is stronger, but the feeling of weakness, and vulnerability comes from the loss of arrogance.

There is a clarity about the perfection of everything. Sounds are crisper, colors are different, there are so many more (new) colors now.

He feels as if he is looking through things and through people, this is a very uncomfortable experience, he tries to focus, but he just looks through everything.

Part of him wants to go back to the way it was, before being alone in the wilderness. But he also enjoys the bliss of how it is now. He wants to weep for no reason, but for the perfection of everything.

He has changed and cannot change back to that which he was before, being alone in the wilderness.

Being alone in the wilderness, for long periods will change your perception of the universe. The universe is the same, but you have shifted to a place where you can see, with new eyes, a new heart, and a new empathy for all life. You have been born a second time and are a child of the wilderness.

There was a time long ago, that a man was encouraged to go into the wilderness alone for a extended period, (40 days and 40 nights in the time of Christ) so that he might find wisdom about life. Sad it is discouraged today.

_______________________________________________________________________________

This was from spending a little over six months alone one winter in the Clearwater Country, near the headwaters of the Susitna River. No human contact, not visual, not even a human voice, near fifty years ago.

 

[Sourdough]

Wrong again, I have friends who live in newhalen and get to hunt the park. They have taken sheep there. They were not born there. I have no intention of deceiving anybody.

Are they hunting in the Park or are they hunting in the Preserve.....??? You and possibly them may not know the distinction. You clearly "claim" they hunt in "THE PARK".

Here it is straight from Lake Clark National Park regulations for hunting, fishing, trapping.

Sport Hunting, Trapping and Fishing​

Sport fishing is allowed throughout the park and preserve while sport hunting and trapping are confined to the national preserve. The National Park Service and the State of Alaska cooperatively manage the wildlife resources in Lake Clark, therefore you must posses a valid Alaska state hunting and/or fishing license and you must comply with State of Alaska sport fishing regulations and sport hunting and trapping regulations.

Please note, the taking of wolves or coyotes under state regulations is prohibited in Lake Clark National Preserve from May 1 to August 9.

Laws & Policies - Lake Clark National Park & Preserve (U.S. National Park Service)

laws, policies, rules, regulations, compendium, CFR, Code of Federal Regulation, policy, violations, protection, protect

www.nps.gov