Wilderness and the American Mind

by Roderick Nash

Roderick Nash's classic study of America's changing attitudes toward wilderness has received wide acclaim since its initial publication in 1967. The Los Angeles Times has listed it among the one hundred most influential books published in the last quarter century, Outside Magazine has included it in a survey of books that changed our world, and it has been called the Book of Genesis for environmentalists. Now a fourth edition of this highly regarded work is available, with a new preface and epilogue in which Nash explores the future of wilderness and reflects on its ethical and biocentric relevance.

Genres: Nature, History, Nonfiction, Environment, Philosophy, Conservation, American History

426 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Frazier Nash, Roderick
Nash, Roderic Frazier
Nash, Roderick F.
Nash, Roderick Frazier

Roderick Frazier Nash is a professor emeritus of history and environmental studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. He was the first person to descend the Tuolumne River (using a raft) [from: en.wikipedia.org]

Reviews

[Kathryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Wilderness and the White Male American Mind" would be a more accurate title. The information that was included was highly informative, comprehensive, and interesting, but there were a LOT of voices missing. I definitely recommend this book as a starting place, but you'll need to read a lot more to actually understand the role of wilderness in the American experience.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wilderness and the American Mind by Roderick Nash

There is just one hope of repulsing the tyrannical ambition of civilization to conquer every niche on the whole earth. That hope is the organization of spirited people who will fight for the freedom of the wilderness. Bob Marshall

In this book, about the evolution of the wilderness movement, Nash starts us off centuries ago in Europe, where most in civilized society viewed wilderness as an embodiment of evil and chaos. This view was brought to America by the Puritans as they worked to tame New England’s wilderness beginning in the 17th century.

Chapter by chapter we see a gradual shift away from the domination of a ‘wicked’ wilderness for purely utilitarian reasons toward a respite from the traps of an urban and increasingly hectic way of existence. In the late 18th century a small Romantic Wilderness movement started in Europe and spread to North America. The spirit manifested itself decades later here in iconic proponents of wilderness such as James Fenimore Cooper, John Audubon, Frederic Church and of course Henry Thoreau.

Transcendentalism took shape with Thoreau and the movement continued in the Northeast with Marsh and others who saw what two centuries of ‘taming’ the wilderness had wrought. Efforts began to preserve areas including a large swath of the Adirondacks and larger areas out West including Yellowstone and Yosemite.

There is a chapter on John Muir the Publicizer and the further growth of the wilderness cult led by popular figures such as Teddy Roosevelt and Jack London. The aim of conservationists like T.R. and preservationists like Muir made for some strange bedfellows at times. It came to a head with the proposal in 1906 to dam up the Hetch Hetchy valley to provide water use to a dry San Francisco. This was one of the few fights that Muir lost, as the dam was completed in 1914, but it also propelled Muir’s Sierra Club into the national consciousness. Support for the organization and for the realization of wilderness preservation came from all areas of the country. Riding on the coat tails of this work, the National Park Service was created to manage the increasing numbers of reserves and parks.

There is a chapter on Aldo Leopold and the beginning of the modern conservation movement with emphasis on species preservation, a slight but significant shift from Muir’s vision. Bob Marshall, David Brower and Sigurd Olson and Edward Abee are featured prominently. One chapter covers the success in preserving the huge number of wilderness parks and land in the periods bookended by the Roosevelt administrations.

The concluding chapters of the book discuss the meaning of permanent wilderness and detail Jimmy Carter’s extraordinary signing of the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act which set aside 56 million acres of protected wilderness, the largest act of wilderness preservation in the planet’s history. The last chapter discusses the environmental successes and its positive effects on environmental movements internationally.

5 stars. Not a tree hugger book per se. Rather a very well written, referenced and detailed history on wilderness ethos, particularly in the United States.

[Eugene Miya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had Rod Nash as a prof. Rod had me for a student. I lived (as many) a couple chapters of this book (between 1st ed. and 2; giving 3 and beyond as gifts), and I could have used this book at that time, because its first edition preceded me and the work of many others. Warning: this is not a popular history, this is a "fully referenced" academic text, it is not easy reading. In a word: it's dense. But the book is capable of clarifying terminology confusion in the environmental movement.

An aside for context: why would one, lowly undergrad student command (too strong a word), deserve(?) respect from a prof? Well about five years before taking the first of two classes normally taught by Rod, I was an organizer of an event titled The First Environmental Teach-In which now goes by a more silly sounding name of "Earth Day". I worked with Senator Gaylord Nelson using Garrett DuBell's book (have now met and dined with Garrett who was 3,000 miles away in DC at the time, an interesting fellow). I'd attend a college where not only Rod taught but also Garrett Hardin, a population biologist who wrote the Tragedy of the Commons essay (started as a speech) in Science (I never had him for a class but he granted me electronic rights to his paper (I also found and corrected a typo)). I read this book a year before taking one of Rod's classes, and I was blown away. Here was a compilation of stuff, we could have used in 1970. We had not properly done our homework. Rod wrote the 1st edition 3 years before these events.

Another word: some readers might find parts of the early-middle third a little tedious. This is understandable and he's better in person and class on these topics about the sublime, and all. Bear with the author (Rod) and this review, either skip or skim ahead chapters. Unfortunately, the production values of earlier paper books could not cover the breadth the the art, painting and humanist values in these sections. Skip or skim. Come back (or not) later.

Nash's book is largely chronological and sets up historic context (it's academic, it's got important end notes, and I've run into Rod's history colleagues over the years).

I'm going to skip attempting to summarize the early history for people thinking wilderness in the arts and literature (I think this is a weakness in the book, but not in the literary sense). It's enough to say that people generally feared the natural world: unspoken were the depths of the seas and away from collections of people (cities and towns). That's traditional history. You get that in western civilization class and US history classes and art history classes.

Following the US civil war (and in Europe, the ascent of the Matterhorn), a couple things happened which influenced the change between people and their relationship to the natural world. Here is where the names of various important people came to pass:

Fred Law Olmstead involved with Central Park in NYC (and other Parks) and Yosemite (I must leave lots out).

John Wesley Powell (Civil War Major, lost his arm) descended the Colorado when it was unknown and mapped parts of the Grand Canyon and went on to found the US Geological Survey, "America's first science agency". He witnessed waste, first in war, and later in various land policies (or lack of).

And possibly most important was Gifford Pinchot who because America's first forester and founded the US Forest Service (USFS). I leave out others in this period. Nash linked these guys and the solidified a name: these were utilitarian conservationists or conservationists. Utilitarian is important because it offered a logical reason to challenge the exploitation for the prior time. We got managed forests, soil conservation, etc. Conservationists made sense (but its not like they didn't have opposition at the time).

The problem (one confusion existing to the present) was the semantic meaning for the purpose of conservation: basically to serve humans for as long as possible (we now use the terms sustainably and renewable). This included wild life. This is why Sierra Club and Audubon Society members are confused by hunting organizations like Duck Unlimited. Hunters and fishers are conservationists and do vote, lobby, and pay fees (distinct from taxes: this is why they get incensed at the next group).

A little after the above time Nathaniel P. Langford comes along and visits Yellowstone and the nation gets its first official National Park (State Parks like Adirondack and Yosemite come earlier) in 1872. People began to see forest reserves as places to recreate (Pinchot was OK with this up to a point). Langford, the later Muir, and Mather (one of the first Park Service Directors) saw the Parks and the start toward wilderness as the beginnings of an Aesthetic Preservationist movement or simply Preservationist for short. The key limitation here was the emphasis on visual aesthetics (beauty: which might have been challenging in later National Parks like the Everglades with it's loveable alligators).

You could never have had a Muir or a Mather without Pinchot. Muir thought fishing was boring. 8^) Muir also thought the private car was a great thing for Yosemite. It would only be problematic later (car critics existed during Muir's life: they did see scaling problems, but Muir was too busy politicking (Mather would have better command)).

Throughout the above mostly political change the rest of the American and European world is urbanizing. Art and literature are changing. The literary Transcendentalists (Emerson and Thoreau, but also Rousseau and Ruskin, and many others, and painters and the new "art" of photography were occurring (Moran and Bierstadt).

After aesthetic preservation, world events (WWI and WWII among others) accelerated cracks in thinking. Utilitarian conservation from the Corps of Engineers and problems with industrialization started the beginnings of the modern environmental movement and concern for ecology. The first two groups, conservationists and preservationist, where human-centered (anthropocentric) whereas a newer non-human-centered way of thinking was starting.

Here is where Nash and I both diverge and agree over a couple decade period from the end of WWII and early Vietnam War. Nash places great significance with Aldo Leopold (the book is about wilderness after all, not the history of the environmental movement). I think the rise of science is more important and the more important figure during this period and for me was Rachel Carson publishing Silent Spring, which I read in 1965. The important topics of the 50s and early 60s were the political rise of the Sierra Club and it's Exec. Director Dave Brower with his "Would you flood the Sistine Chapel to get closer to the ceiling?" (a comparison to preserve the Grand Canyon). We needed this badly in 1970. Muir had opposition, too. Read what was said of them.

Subsequent editions starting in 1973 (my first) would cover those events mentioning Colin Fletcher and Paul Simon (the singer) (we saw relevance), and then later editions covered Alaskan wilderness (I've now lost count the time's I've gone to help friends do research up there). For better or worse, the environmental is one which is mostly white, mostly male, and mostly urban. Exceptions are easily cited like Leopold (as a forest ranger, even if somewhat academic), Rachel Carson, and so forth.

I've summarized most of the book for you reading this. Rod does it better. It's not a book about excitement. It's a lesson. Nash integrates bits of the human endeavor. Rod would go on to write other books. The next best which I recommend is The Rights of Nature which was derived from a minority Supreme Court opinion by Justice William O. Douglas termed "The Rights of Rocks." I think this other books, for instance collections of essays don't do Rod justice.

My first attempt to use Rod's book was in his environmental history class, but he took a sabbatical that year, and I experienced a different incredible lecturer in Alfred Runte. Best first class lecture I had in all college. Al's up in the Pacific NW now. I've missed running into him in Yosemite a number of times. It would be the following year that I would have Rod "the God" as a prof. We jointly sponsored a visit by Dave Brower whom I got to know following that. Before the end of his class, he very nicely told me that I was already fully capable of teaching his/our class of 350.

History was not boring. I had started off in 1973 as a nuclear engineering major (the Sierra Club changed its position from pro- anti- just before this time) to work on problems of climate change (it was a topic before now, and even before back then: this is a warning). Rod, for a general education prof, made the topic worth while.

Additional context to Roderick Nash. Rod is a noted river runner/guide in dories and rubber rafts. (Not a kayaker.) He's one of those guys with chiseled looks and a commanding voice like a TV news anchor (all students considered this: for real). Rod was the first man to descend the Tuolumne River (most notably Clavey Falls). In this sense, one of the precursors to extreme river descents. Rod has a coffee table river book, too. A lot of students and others made fun of Rod; he really does know his stuff, and this is likely the longest review I hope to key in. Rod deserves it.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s a good reminder every time I’m made aware that our ideas aren’t our own, that our society’s ideas aren’t the only ones, that whatever current intellectual revolution we find ourselves in, it’s the temporary result of hundreds or thousands of cumulative years of ideas. If it comes in the form of a book on wilderness, so be it. And even, it’s all the more apt that it should come from a book on wilderness.

“A millennium is almost meaningless geologically; in terms of human history, however, it is an understandable unit of time.”

Even when this book tends towards the dry—more academic than passionate—it’s a great look at our changing attitudes and philosophies over the past century and a half. If a millennium is a blip on the geologic radar, well, it’s fun to extrapolate down to our less-than-a-blip history.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

“A Marxist formulation is tempting. There seems to be a social and economic class of nature lovers whose national affiliations are not as strong as their common interest in enjoying and saving wilderness wherever it exists” (343).

[Cat · Rating 2 out of 5]

I believed that this book would be an exploration of the concept of "wilderness" as it relates to the American mind. And it is, for about one hundred pages. Since this is a four hundred page bok, that leaves a lot of space to fill.
I found the first two hundred pages to be interesting, the last two hundred to be a slog. Nash spends an interminable amount of time covering "contemporary" environmental struggles. Were it my book, I would have omitted the chapter about Alaska. I imagine that most who read this book have a grasp on the environmental struggles of the recent past.

As I mentioned before, the reason I read this book was to gain a perspecitve on how these struggles came about.

This book is, I suppose, a classic in the field. I guess, ultimately, it's just a field (environmentalism/ecology) that doesn't interest me that much. So I'm glad I read it, but I wouldn't recommend it to others, unless those others consider themselves dedicated environmentalists. Then you HAVE to read this book.

[Adrian Buck · Rating 5 out of 5]

An increasingly cynical read, but then you get to the epilogue and realise that - yes, a cynic is a frustrated idealist.

[Nancy Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second read (2024)
When I first read this book, it was my introduction to the idea of Wilderness with a capital W. Now, reading it again after having studied this topic for almost ten years, this book helps to organize all the information I've acquired in a useful timeline.

Our evolution of thoughts about wilderness mirror Maslow's hierarchy of needs. At first we needed shelter and safety from bodily harm, and wilderness was a threat to that. Now that we have more control over our environment, we have the luxury of appreciating something for it's intrinsic or spiritual value rather than what basic needs it can meet. And because of that uniquely American evolution of our relationship with wilderness, we value it as an important part of our history.

First read (2015)
From the first chapter, this book helped to reshape my idea of wilderness.

[Nancy]

Let's face it. I started this book in March. It is January. I have finished aver 50 other books since I started this one. I am not going to finish this book. The topic sounds interesting, but the writing style is too academic for the general reader like myself. It may be a very good academic thesis, but is not the book for me. To be fair I did not rank it.

[Kristin · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good book, but kind of tedious. At times it felt like I was reading the same thing over and over again.

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned a lot reading this classic. However, I think Nash hobbles himself in his more critical and philosophical phase, towards the end of the book, by according far too much weight to the suggestion that "wilderness" is a quality of perception - in the eye of the beholder, so to speak. Cartainly, an adequate understanding of wilderness needs to account for a wilderness quality or "wilderness experience" - wilderness includes or embraces those - but that is a very different thing from saying that the reality of wilderness is contained within how we think about it. Nash ends up losing some of the force of his ethical argument in favor of "Island Civilization," as a result. He seems to lack a resource to insist on how much we need to rethink not wilderness, but our selves in face of wilderness, as a hard reality in which we are embedded for better or worse. So he pins his hopes on technology, with barely a word about the moral and political challenges other than that we will have to give up some Lockean, libertarian freedom to do as we like. Maybe indigenous people still know some things that we can't do without, even though we keep trying.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

I do not rate five stars because I think this is the be-all, end-all about the virtues of wilderness. The criticism that this book focuses solely on white conservation and recreation are correct, if unfair. YAH DUH rich white men on the East Coast were not thinking about Native Americans' relationship to the land when they extolled the virtues of the unspoiled American wilderness.

I give this book five stars because I had not realized how much "wilderness" was a marketing term for this young country, and how "loving wild places" could be a trend that peaks and wanes (and re-emerges during times of national dissatisfaction? For my job's sake, I hope so.) I loved thinking about 19th century American gentlemen looking around and thinking, "Hmm, what makes us cool. What makes us different. How about...our cuisine? No. Our dashing sense of style? No. How about...MILLIONS OF ACRES OF UNDEVELOPED LAND? Yes, let's make the wilderness COOL and VERY AMERICAN! EUROPE'S GOT NOTHING ON US!!"

[Pat Rolston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roderick Nash wrote the book based on his doctoral thesis and that isn’t readily apparent in a good way. His thesis recounts the history of wilderness in America as a mental construct. The book is an engaging expansion of that thesis that is both informative and entertaining. I appreciate how well Mr Nash carries forward with how our understanding of the American wilderness throughout history shapes associated policy. To really understand where we have been and are going regarding this all important subject read the book.

[Preston Scott Blakeley · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is indeed something uniquely American about wilderness. The intense longing to escape into so-called untrammeled areas continues to pervade our national psyche. But Nash points out that wilderness cravings are a result of our conquest of those very spaces. Civilization creates wilderness. Our understanding of wilderness changes with the cultural climate. This work is a helpful expedition of the various social attitudes, and their impact upon the perception of wilderness in American life.

[Brock · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent and necessary read. It is well written and researched and articulates well many feelings one has about the wilderness. We must keep it. It is also "a geography of the mind" as the wilderness is first and foremost a cultural human construct. I really enjoyed the book. Nash's vision for the next millennium is the stuff of science fiction, though it makes sense. We need a sea change about the way we view the natural world and our place in it.

[Billy Marino · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had to write a review for class, so here it is:

Roderick Frazier Nash’s now classic text impressively lays the foundation for the field of Environmental History. By using an “inside-out” approach to examine the way America, or more specifically white elite American men, thought about nature, Nash reveals how trends toward “civilization” created desires for “wilderness” during America’s short history. The book’s narrative is fluid using a chronological form, with some profiles of important figures scattered throughout, until the slightly anachronistic and often redundant chapters of later editions. The book hinges on the core idea that, “wilderness is a state of mind…not so much what wilderness is but what men think it is.” (5)

The first few chapters collectively base America’s early perceptions of nature in Old World, Judeo-Christian thought that rests on wilderness as a dark, mysterious place that is the bedrock of evil. Nash decisively shows how this “intellectual legacy” worked on both a material and spiritual level to advocate for conquering of the wilderness. The danger posed by the “unknowns” of the wild extended from physical destruction to mental straying from God to a realm of anarchy and heathenism. Nash skillfully argues these origins led to the now well-known ideas of American Manifest Destiny to conquer the wilderness and bring civilization, which was a crux of forming American identity as a young nation.

Yet, Nash knowledgeably demonstrates, as America’s civilizing mission continued, ideas of wilderness saw increased variation. The frontiersmen and pioneers who worked the land continued the old mindset, but those educated and raised in cities began to romanticize the wilderness. Through journals of travelers, writers, painters, and other elites with the money and time to spare, the American wilderness itself, not its conquering, began to become the unique marker of American identity. Awkwardly placed as an addition in the last chapter, Nash even shows the global attraction of American wilderness as an export commodity. The popularity spread into spiritual realms through the new religions of Deism and Transcendentalism that recognized God, not evil, in the wilderness.

It is here that Nash expertly shows how the “cult of wilderness” that became increasingly popular stemmed from the artistic and literary minds of city-born Americans. The growth of romantic interest in wilderness paved the way for the conservation movement which would eventually split down the lines of John Muir’s preservation instincts, and Gifford Pinchot’s utilitarian management ideas. Both carried strong political and philosophical arguments into the twenty-first century, which is often clumsily, but importantly argued through the case-studies of Hetch Hetchy, Echo Park, Alaska, and the Grand Canyon.

Nash excellently uses an array of interdisciplinary sources to peer into the minds of important American men and how their views shaped popular thought about wilderness, and more foundationally, American identity. While meaningfully laying the groundwork for the field of Environmental History, this work is also lacking both perspectives and perceptions of other’s such as Native Americans and women. With brief mentions, most of which come in the additional chapters, this book does not do enough to tell the whole story of Wilderness and the American Mind. It also leaves some terms ill-defined, including “frontier, “civilization,” and even “wilderness,” yet, it paves the way for increased study into how thought about nature shapes identity, culture, economics, and politics.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started reading Wilderness and the American Mind, Fifth Addition by Roderick Frazier Nash last summer and finished it today. Why did it take me so long to finish this book? Well, mainly I stopped reading it when school started because my classes focused heavily on environmental sciences. However, this does not mean that I didn't enjoy this book because I did. While reading, I could see how Americans perspective of nature changed over time, from viewing nature as a dangerous nuisance to conquer, to romanticizing nature as the transcendentalists did, to the philosophical view that nature has intrinsic value. This book also shows how the national parks were developed over time to preserve nature, and how the United States established the first National Park, Yellow Stone National Park. Of course, it took a while for the reason to develop national parks to become less anthropocentric.


In the last chapter, The International Perspective, the Europeans only cared about preserving African wildlife for themselves or generally speaking, white people recreation. They had little or no concern for the well-being of the African natives. While these national parks in Africa brought tourists and boosted the economy, this reason alone still did not effectively help with preserving African wildlife. Well, later on, they did promote nature education to Africans, but I feel that they could have done a better job. I believe they were going about nature preservation the wrong way. They were not finding the balance between nature and human development. To develop civilization alongside nature, instead of destroying it.

While the Europeans were so concerned about preserving other countries wildlife, they had little to no interest in learning how to incorporate their native wildlife into their own cities and towns or trying to restore their own wildlife. They should have focused more on their own environmental problems and solutions. It is very hypocritical to have industrialized ones own country while not caring at all for nature and wildlife, and then expecting a poor developing country to do the opposite of what your successful country has done, especially without the proper tools and technology or education.

Don't get me wrong, it is good that African wildlife was preserved, but, like I said before, I think they went about it the wrong way. However, I will give them the benefit of the doubt because they did not understand a lot about the environment like we do today. Which leads me to say that we could do a better job in caring for the environment today because we can see how essential nature is to all life. It all comes down to balance.

At the end of the book, in the epilogue, Nash confirms my idea of balance between civilization and nature, however, he describes a different idea he has called Island Civilization. Island Civilization is where humans control their development, rather than controlling nature. Humans, using high-technology, can live in enclosed spaces with the ability to make their own resources and materials within that one enclosure. All of this can be done while still using and developing technology. Humans could only improve their well-being by controlling their civilization's development and allowing wilderness to do its thing.

[N · Rating 5 out of 5]

"'Wilderness,' unlike mountains, canyons, and forests, is a perceived reality, a quality. It has more to do with the geography of the mind than of the land.'"



"Wild is a contraction of 'willed'...Wilderness literally means self-willed land."

Thoreau, 23 years old: "I grow savager and savager every day, as if fed on raw meat, and my tameness is only the repose of untamableness." "While admitting his love for Concord, Thoreau made clear how glad he was 'when I discover, in oceans and wilderness far away, the materials out of which a million Concords can be made—indeed unless I discover them, I am lost myself.'"

John Muir: "The solitude of the wilderness 'is a sublime mistress, but an intolerable wife.' 'The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.'..'In God's wildness lies the hope of the world—the great fresh, unblighted, unredeemed wilderness.'...Muir could not suppress a chuckle at [Thoreau] a man who could see 'forests in orchards and patches of huckleberry brush' or whose output at Walden was a 'mere saunter' from Concord."

Apparently, John Muir hated sheep: "As sheep advance, flowers, vegetation, grass, soil, plenty and poetry vanish." This is a bizarrely powerful antipathy for an innocent creature.

Thoreau: "I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness...in Wildness is the preservation of the World." "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately." "I believe that Adam in paradise was not so favorably situated on the whole as is the backwoodsman in America...[it] remains to be seen how the western Adam in the wilderness will turn out."


"Twilight in the Wilderness...the scene is suffused with the light of a brilliant sunset suggestive of the apocalyptical expectations a virgin continent aroused."

Emerson: "America needed 'some of the sand of the Old World to be carted on to her rich but as yet unassimilated meadows' as a precondition for cultural greatness. Again the answer lay in balancing the wild and the cultivated."

Aldo Leopold: "'Shallow minded modern man...who prates of empires, political and economic' lacked the humility to perceive...'It is only the scholar who appreciates that all history consists of successive excursions from a single starting-point, to which man returns again and again to organize yet another search for a durable scale of values.' This initial bedrock was 'raw wilderness'."

Bob Marshall: "When asked how many wilderness areas America needed, he replied, 'How many Brahms symphonies do we need?' Indeed, in some respects natural beauty took precedence over synthetic varieties. In the presence of wilderness, Marshall noted, all the senses came into play."

Teddy Roosevelt: "called upon his countrymen to lead a 'life of strenuous endeavor.' This included keeping in contact with wilderness: pioneering was an important antidote to dull mediocrity. 'As our civilization grows older and more complex....we need a greater and not a less a development of the fundamental frontier virtues.'"

William Bartram, "born to a family which prized the life of the mind...began extensive explorations in the unsettled regions of the Southeast...traveled some five thousand miles and kept a detailed journal...admitted being 'seduced by these sublime enchanting scenes of primitive nature,' and in the Carolina wilderness he 'beheld with rapture and astonishment, a sublimely awful scene of power and magnificence, a world of mountains piled upon mountains.' For him, as with European aesthetes, the sublime in nature was linked with God's grandeur, and Bartram frequently praised 'the supreme author of nature' whose 'wisdom and power' were manifested in wilderness."

Estwick Evans: "how great are the advantages of solitude!—How sublime is the silence of nature's ever-active energies! There is something in the very name of wilderness, which charms the ear, and soothes the spirit of man. There is religion in it."

Jeremy Belknap: "a poetic fancy may find full gratification amidst these wild and rugged scenes...aged mountains, stupendous elevations, rolling clouds, impending rocks, verdant woods...and the roaring torrent...to amaze, to soothe, to enrapture."

James Hall: "I know of nothing more splendid than a forest of the west, standing in its original integrity, adorned with the exuberant beauties of a powerful vegetation, and crowned with the honors of a venerable age...the forest is seen in its majesty; the pomp and pride of the wilderness is here. Here is nature unspoiled, and silence undisturbed."

"Thinking of wild nature as an actively traded commodity in an international market clarifies appreciation and largely explains the world nature protection movement. The export-import relationship underscores the irony inherent in the fact that the civilizing process which imperils wild nature is precisely that which creates the need for it. As a rule the nations that have wilderness do not want it, and those that want it do not have it....The traded commodity is experience. The importers consume it on the premises."

"In the early nineteenth century American nationalists began to understand that it was in the wildness of its nature that their country was unmatched. While other nations might have an occasional wild peak or patch of heath, there was no equivalent of a wild continent. And if, as many suspected, wilderness was the medium through which God spoke most clearly, then America had a distinct moral advantage over Europe, where centuries of civilization had deposited a layer of artificiality over His works."

"'Can there be a country in the world better calculated than ours to exercise and to exhalt the imagination—to call into activity the creative powers of the mind, and to afford just views of the beautiful, the wonderful, and the sublime America had mountains, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, and 'boundless forests' unequalled in all the world. [De Witt Clinton concluded that] the wild, romantic and awful scenery is calculated to produce a correspondent impression in the imagination—to elevate all the feelings of the heart.' Similar statements were legion. Anyone venturing to suggest that a 'man will not necessarily be a great poet because he lives near a great mountain was shouted down as disloyal to his country.'"

"Dwight even felt it worthy of comparison with the cultural magnificence of Europe. 'The conversion of a wilderness into a desirable residence for man,' he declared early in the century, 'at least may compensate the want of ancient castles, ruined abbeys, and fine pictures.' For a young country, self-conscious about its achievements and anxious to justify independence with success, the conquest of wilderness bolstered the national ego. 'What a people we are! What a country is this of ours,' chortled Josiah Grinnell in 1845, 'which but as yesterday was a wilderness.'"

Nathaniel P Willis: "Our forests, fresh as it were, from the hands of the Creator, are, beyond dispute, incomparable."

"The wild world, according to David Brower, fills man's need for an environment 'where he can be reminded that civilization is only a thin veneer over the deep evolutionary flow of things that built him.'"


"North of sixty degrees latitude the sun does not shine at all in the heart of the winter."

[Tom Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nash tells the fascinating history of the relationship between non-native (almost entirely white male) people and wilderness, focusing on the United States. He describes many philosophical and policy questions our society has faced as Europeans established and then advanced a frontier at end edge of their civilization. He ends by comparing and connecting the history of the American wilderness to those of many other countries on our planet and ends with far-out picture of how a sophisticated future human society could share Earth with the wilderness.

Reading this book greatly increased my appreciation for the existence of our public lands and the challenges facing modern land managers. I’ve already found this broadened perspective valuable when seeking common ground in conversations about land. I found the descriptions of wealthy city dwellers returning from their wilderness excursions with self-aggrandizing tales of sublime landscapes and rejuvenated spirits pretty entertaining; almost 200 years have passed and only the tools have changed.

This is non-fiction and contains a lot of references. This book is clearly a summary of a lifetime of academic study, which comes from a mostly white male perspective of history.

[Greg Marcinkowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dang, so good! Really is a definitive history of the conservation movement in America, and even into other parts of the world in this 5th edition. I can't believe the amount of research Nash did, the quotes and citations and footnotes are beyond extensive. I was always a little hesitant to pick this up, thinking it might be sort of a dense, rote history, but it remained enjoyable the entire time and was a joy to read. Glad these words have gone through my brain!

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an outstanding resource for the student of American wilderness history up to the 70s. Keeping in mind this is an older edition, the newer one may be equally useful through the end of the 20th century. The bibliographical essay at the end alone is worth the purchase.

However, the book itself is not particularly inspiring. The writing is slow and plodding. Sometimes theories are arrived at that are not necessary to the discussion and rest on shaky ground. While comprehensive, its organization seems, at times, haphazard. The viewpoint is strictly European and European descendant based with very little commentary made on the Native American viewpoint and none on the African American viewpoint.

Those things being said, it is arguably one of the best reference books out there in regards to the ideas and perceptions of wilderness in the United States from colonial roots to the post-Vietnam era. It is a great starting point for any research on the topic and I would recommend it to any student of environmental history.

[Clara Mazzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quando Roderick Frazier Nash ebbe l’idea di scrivere la sua tesi di laurea sull’evoluzione del pensiero americano in merito alla wilderness, non aveva minimamente idea che il suo lavoro sarebbe diventato un must read nonché un pilastro del pensiero storico-filosofico del suo intero paese. Continuamente aggiornato (l’ultima edizione, la quarta arriva fino agli anni Ottanta), il lavoro di Nash ci fa fare un viaggio affascinante dai puritani che sbarcarono dal Mayflower nel 1620 e che si ritrovarono davanti un certo tipo di wilderness - che loro interpretavano ed hanno affrontato come un qualcosa di ostile, da abbattere, da domare e la frontiera rappresentava la linea del progresso, della civilizzazione - alla guerra di indipendenza americana, in cui il neo popolo si mette alla ricerca di quel qualcosa che li distinguesse da quegli inglesi di cui erano i consanguinei fino al giorno prima e questo qualcosa lo trovano nella wilderness: una natura selvaggia e incontaminata che gli europei si possono solo sognare. Qui avviene il primo cambiamento di pensiero: la wilderness non è più qualcosa di negativo, ma un motivo di orgoglio, di americanità pura. Tutto l’Ottocento si srotola lungo una lenta ed inesorabile evoluzione nei confronti della wilderness che procede di pari passo col disfacimento della frontiera americana, dichiarata storicamente esaurita nel 1890. Chi sono gli americani, adesso, se non hanno più una frontiera? Se non c’è più la wilderness con cui confrontarsi? Se non c’è la wilderness, non c’è più neanche l’americanità! Ecco allora che avviene il secondo grande cambiamento: la wilderness va protetta! Come la si può proteggere? Innanzi tutto con la creazione di aree protette (1864 Yosemite Valley, 1872 Yellowstone Park, 1892 Adirondaks) e poi con tutta una serie di organizzazioni outdoors che vanno dal Sierra Club, agli Scout, alla Wilderness Society (che tra l’altro è stata strumentale per il Wilderness Act del 1964 che ha generato il Preservation System) e questo percorso evolutivo viene riflesso nella letteratura, si pensi a “Zanna Bianca” di Jack London, o a “Tarzan delle Scimmie” di Edgar Rice Burroughs a all’Ultimo dei Mohicani, di Fenimor Cooper.
Successivamente a ben due guerre mondiali e alla Grande Depressione, sbarchiamo agli anni Sessanta, cruciali sia per l’evoluzione socio-culturale dell’America che per la wilderness. L’assassinio di ben due presidenti a poca distanza tra loro e di Martin Luther Kin,g ma soprattutto il Vietnam che incombe su di una società giovanissima (la metà della popolazione era sotto i venticinque anni) portano i ragazzi, figli di una generazione che dopo essere passata attraverso le gravi preoccupazioni della prima metà del secolo, vedeva nella crescita economica la sicurezza tanto agognata, a mettere in discussione i valori con cui sono stati educati, perché ben lungi dal proteggerli in tanta sicurezza in realtà la società li sta portando al macello. I ragazzi non sono comprensibilmente affatto d’accordo con la situazione e cominciano a riflettere, creano la ben nota “controcultura” degli anni Sessanta, ovvero quella cultura che va “contro” quel sistema che gli mette molta paura. In questo contesto, la wilderness ritorna molto in auge perché la controcultura abbraccia una filosofia di pace (innanzi tutto) e di connessione con la natura perché l’uomo dipende da essa. È il momento in cui nascono parole come “ambientalismo” ed “ecologismo” ed è nel 1964 che viene promulgato la Wilderness Act di cui sopra. In poche parole, lo shifting attorno al concetto di wilderness ha compiuto la sua rotazione completa: adesso è diventato un valore imprescindibile. Me non è tutto: la wilderness è un concetto creato dall’uomo (perché non esiste in natura), un bianco, ricco e colto. L’onda dell’entusiasmo per la wilderness porterà il presidente Jimmy Carter a firmare nel 1980 il singolo atto più grande della storia della protezione ambientale: l’Alaska National Interest Land Preservation Act.
Ben lungi dall’arrestare il suo movimento, il concetto di wilderness riparte e comincia ad avvolgersi pericolosamente su sé stesso: è talmente in voga, che adesso tutti la vogliono - e la sopraffanno (vedi, per esempio, l’Everest o il Monte Bianco). In poche parole, l’amore per la wilderness, la sta uccidendo. Questo porta ad un risveglio delle coscienze in merito e per la prima volta, la wilderness ha più sostenitori che detrattori: va protetta ad ogni costo, anche di più (questo rimane invariato) ma bisogna migliorare il management della sua protezione - come per esempio creare delle liste d’attesa per andare in quei posti che tutti vogliono, come è stato fatto per il River Running lungo il Grand Canyon che ha visto solo 73 persone scivolare sulle sue acque nell’arco di settant’anni (dal 1869 al 1940) aumentare a 547 solo vent’anni dopo (1965) e crescere in maniera esponenziale nel 1980 toccando la cifra di 15.142 persone. Venne allora istituita una lista d’attesa nel 1982, lunga ben 9 anni.
E adesso? Il climate change non fa (ancora?) parte di questo gran classico della letteratura non-fiction americana, ma non dobbiamo aspettare che esca l’aggiornamento per capire che dobbiamo seriamente darci da fare!
Un libro strepitoso.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional. Was a true revelation to me at that time and has informed my opinions on Wilderness and policy ever since.

[Julie Richert-Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

A profoundly important history tracking all of the ways our biases regarding wilderness have developed and shifted since colonization. Eventually it catalogs the details and politics of the National Park System, The Wilderness Protection Act and a multitude of other efforts to preserve and create awareness of wild spaces. Fascinating to learn how the efforts made in the United States became a template for other nations and how the approach to preservation succeeds and fails and polarizes. It leaves us in the early 1980's, with searching questions and an array of imagined potentialities about the future of wilderness, particularly of how "awareness" itself is a double-edged sword.
The scholarship is towering and provides endless trails of opportunity for further reading.

"Without unspoiled nature to provide a touch of idealism, life degenerates into a race for the trough." -Robert Underwood Johnson

Links: That Wild Country: An Epic Journey through the Past, Present, and Future of America's Public Lands
The National Parks: America's Best Idea
Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas
Beyond Naturalness: Rethinking Park and Wilderness Stewardship in an Era of Rapid Change
John Muir: Apostle of Nature
The Naturalist: Theodore Roosevelt and His Adventures in the Wilderness
The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America
The Father of Glacier National Park: Discoveries and Explorations In His Own Words
Crisis of the Wasteful Nation: Empire and Conservation in Theodore Roosevelt's America
A Wilderness Original: The Life Of Bob Marshall
All The Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West

[John Winn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't claim to be an environmentalist. I am a student of history however, and in some strange and imperceptible way I am fascinated by the history of the conservation, or one might better call it, wilderness movement here in these United States. Like a lot of my fellow students I was assigned this book by a rather incorrigible and inspirational professor in my senior year at college, and after reading it I am sure not the same person I was going in.

You don't know what you don't know, and as it turns out there is plenty to find out here. Hetch Hetchy is probably the least well known story in the history of the environmental movement. Outside of a few well known documentaries and a few magazine articles there isn't much discussion of it. It does not have the flair and drama of more contemporary flashpoints in our own time, but as it was unfolding it was every bit as controversial as Standing Rock is today--and bittersweet as well. Ever the academician Mr. Nash captures this in its length and breadth; it is perhaps the example of the struggle between preservation on the one hand and government's obligation to the people on the other, but not the only one.

The history of the wilderness movement is a lengthy and voluminous one. As an academic resource Wilderness and the American Mind does its best to capture the scope of that, but it is far from the only one. It is also among the best sourced. Cited by over 5,000 historians and experts including William Cronon, PW Taylor and others it has gone on to be an influential resource in the fields of environmental ethics, history, and sustainable development among others. And aspiring environmental scientists, lawyers, policy makers and others will get some mileage out of it as well--but that is not why it is special.

Sometimes the greatest source of information is the thing hidden in plain sight. This is a dense book, and thanks to Mr. Nash's attention to detail a weighty one as well, but well worth it. It isn't for everyone, but much like the vistas featured within its page, if you scale the summit you can appreciate the view, and what a view it is.

[Sarah Clement · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of those books where, if you grew up in America or have been influenced by similar notions of 'wilderness' (I find many other places have similar ideas of wilderness, outside of Europe), you will actually realise quite a lot about yourself in reading this book. In the current political climate, it perhaps feels strange now to think about the fact that 'national parks', as first developed, were an American concept where large tracts of nature are protected with the notion of conservation as their primary purpose. The idea has been transferred across the globe, and although in many places 'national parks' really bear little resemblance to their American counterparts (in Europe, for example, they are often just large areas of farmland where people live and work, which is quite far from their original conception), but this book made me think about that influence not just on institutions, but on national identity. But despite our romanticisation of wilderness, as Nash points out, national parks did not emerge out of a mass movement of Americans calling for preservation. They emerged largely out of a small group of conservationists like John Muir (a Scotsman, in fact) spearheading efforts to protect the American West. What I like about this book is that it tracks the development of a philosophy of wilderness over time, and contains a comprehensive account of how key individuals helped make recreation in wilderness the 'in' thing to do. So victorious were they, Nash argues, that many of our wilderness areas are actually overrun with people, ironically damaging the very thing that gave the movement appeal. Nash also has a gift for distilling information into simple, digestible pieces, thus the book contains a lot of graphs that are not so much depictions of quantitative data, but translate qualitative data into compelling heuristics for understanding how that philosophy developed over time. The book is so popular that it is now on its 5th edition, and is definitely a must read for anyone who loves nature and the idea of 'wilderness'.

[Scott Pfahler · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book tells the history of the idea of wilderness in the United States. It has become one of the books many people point to as a touchstone in the field of wilderness conservation alongside books like A Sand County Almanac and Walden. The basic narrative it traces is how our conception of wilderness shifted dramatically throughout the history of this country from something to be feared and tamed to something to be admired and preserved. One interesting topic the book covers is the complicated history of wilderness management. Once Americans started to realize that its natural places might be something they should protect, they first focused on the economic value of wilderness before the movement started to think that wild places deserved to be protected regardless of economics. As the conservation movement gained momentum and wilderness preserves and National Parks became more common people began to realize that the movement might become a victim of its own success (the book talks about the concern that we might be loving our wilderness to death). The book highlights many of the major figures in the history of the conservation movement such as Emerson, Thoreau, Muir and others. Given that the original edition was published in 1967, white men make up almost all of the figures this book focuses on, which is disappointing that the author did not bring in any other perspectives in the modern edition. Overall though this is a fascinating if somewhat dense read.

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

This, in my opinion, is a good history of the evolution of the conflict between the dominant American paradigm and the concept of providing respectful space for the continuation of all nonhuman life beyond its immediate value or utility for an overly extractive, short-sighted western culture.

There are reviews complaining about which voices are omitted in the telling, but the bottom line—as is discussed between the lines and in the epilogue to this 21st century edition—is that the growth-centered, monetary wealth measured, inequality demanding, exploitation-based sociopolitical economic structure is winning the war.

The book outlines a “philosophy of wilderness” that extends beyond the individual or personal experience of a Thoreau or Muir. Nash attempts to describe the macro, meta, deeper, more ethically based belief that everything in Nature has intrinsic value beyond human experience or needs.

And that meta long-range view is needed now because there is very little left on the planet that is not being altered by the largesse and selfishness of the dominant “American mindset.” Can we call anything truly wilderness anymore?

That is not to say we should stop fighting the good fight to preserve as much as we can in as intact a state as it was before. We must. The book provides a history of how some of that fight has gone and the thinking that might have inspired some of the believers in wilderness and deep ecology to soldier on. I recommend the read.

[Kerry Pickens · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The greatest happiness possible to a man ... is to become civilized, to know the pageant of the past, to love the beautiful, to have just ideas of values and proportions, and then retaining his animal spirits and appetites, to live in a wilderness, - J. Frank Dobie”

Roderick Nash’s first published this book in 1967 through Yale University Press, and there are many editions since then which reflects its popularity. It may have been used as a college textbook because the used copy I got was thoroughly highlighted. Nash begins his references to man’s projecting his own value system onto wild landscapes through study of Torah and Old Testament text. He traces the history of this particular viewpoint forward until Yosemite National Park was established. There was ongoing controversy at that time concerning whether large urban areas could damn rivers in national parks to use their water resources. Nash also discusses more current authors like Rachel Carson and the “counterculture” focus on communing with and protecting the environment. I enjoy reading this book because it is reassuring to me during the current status of our country that we were once a people that stood tall for what was right.

[Will Connelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written but long

Nash offers an excellent analysis of how wildnerness became both a part of the American national fabric and came to represent the one thing that made America unique from other countries between the 18th and 20th centuries. While Nash offers excellent transitions and excellent insights into the ideas and legislation that led to the establishment of national parks, towards the end he gets slightly long winded, to the point of making his work less accessible to a more general audience. Perhaps the biggest downfall to this book is the final chapter where Nash engages into speculation about the future of humans relationship wth the wilderness, and while he does have some interesting ideas, I think he spends far too much time indulging in his own ideas instead of offering a proper summarization of his overall ideas. However, ignoring those parts, this is an excellent read for those looking to explore the social and political history of our national parks.