Wilderness - Justice Le Tran Alexander

Wilderness is brought up numerous times in American Camino and In Chapter 4 is where I find some interesting conceptions of the word. Redick states, "Defining wilderness, therefore, erases the very thing we attempt to understand."(American Camino pg.160) Continuing this thought multiple interpretations of wilderness are engaged with. Also taking away from Nash, an elusive understanding of the term is further explicated. the -ness of wilderness implies a state of being or concept of feeling applied to a person. 

Though why is it that people can interpret wilderness as a physical place or object or group of objects? Redick expands on this by introducing Michael Frome's interpretation of wilderness as a dream then turning to an explanation of dream as a personal mythology. I see how this line of thinking can disrupt contemporary understandings of the wilderness. When confronted with depictions of nature in our media there is an objectification of wild spaces. Few have the constant opportunity to actually visit these remote spaces so when conceptualizing the idea of wilderness it becomes a challenge to remove the picturesque idea of the wild. 

Working through this I have a hard time myself separating what I think wilderness means and coming to terms that it can really be seen as a mythology of my own creation, but further reading exposes a similar inquiry of how hikers can find wilderness on a wilderness trail. 

Redick is able to use the metaphor of the survivalist to encapsulate the idea of immediately conceptualizing nature. Through the use of different "techniques" the survivalist is able to in a sense mediate interactions with the wilderness. The mythological understanding of wilderness needs not apply here as as techniques in framing wilderness are the methods through which one can interact with it in a sense. 

Landscapes are brought up as well and as I said before when confronted with depictions of nature in our media there is an objectification of wild spaces. I see that humans have this need to define the world around them. I never worked closely with the word wilderness; whenever I heard the word I would picture untouched landscapes and lands places where man does not have a dominant effect. But incorporating the perspectives of hikers and theologists has brought me to new ideas of how we compartmentalize and continually adapt our understanding of our surroundings. 

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