The End of Wilderness?

This past weekend I indulged in an experience that replenishes my soul; wilderness canoe-camping. There is something about being in a place where you see no evidence of humans, a place where the sounds are those of nature; water, wind, birds, that is exquisitely restorative.

My partner and I headed for a big lake I had last been to ten years ago. It was a location known to only a few and access was through a resident who allowed people to park on her land. My surprise was the morning of the first day, while swimming, when I heard voices and around the corner came a couple in a canoe. Next came a few people in a motor boat, the driver seemingly with driver attention-deficit disorder. He zipped all over the lake, looped around our island several times, and finally came close to our campsite, within yelling distance. “We are looking for site number 48” he yelled, wild-eyed. “Well, its not here, we said”. After he left we looked up and noticed there was a number on our campsite, 47.

The rest of the day brought a whole procession of canoes and motor boats. Quiet fishing boats put-putting along, couples paddling sedately by, a guy with his two kids, 6 canoes filled with boy scouts, a gaggle of ladies, and many motor boats with no seeming destination or purpose, racing up and down the lake. The secret of this lake was out. People had built roads and boat launches to it, cheap depth-finder technology allowed for high-speed boats to zip around without fear of submerged rocks or logs. This place was wilderness no longer.

Wilderness and contact with nature is important to us as humans. It connects us to something ancient and elemental in us. Richard Louv, author of The Nature Principle, identifies 10 reasons why adults and children need nature in our lives. Included in his list is that we are hard-wired to love nature and we actually suffer when we are without it.

I reflected on the paradox: how can we have wilderness, how can people experience the wonder of it; when the more people who want to experience it, the less it is wilderness. Of course national parks provide rules and regulations that keep out the ADD motor boaters which, in my humble opinion, turn a peaceful lake into a personal theme park. The rules and regulations, on the other hand, where a place to put up your tent (often close to others) and when is designated, make it only a quasi wilderness experience to me, having experienced otherwise.

Perhaps wilderness is simply not wilderness with us there at all. I may selfishly think that just me being there is OK, but wilderness is for the other species to live their lives without our impact. It is there because nature needs it for herself. Perhaps we can only experience glimpses of it and I have to resign myself to lining up with everyone else who wants to feel a hint of it in a park, or else live with the motor boaters.