My favorite Teddy

Teddy Roosevelt is my favorite president. Not for his name, not for his cowboy image, not even for his gap toothed smile and khaki inspired fashion. I like him because he liked the outdoors, I like him because he is from New York. I like him because he gave us a national conservation movement. He represents a time period where the frontier was vanishing. Nature inspired nostalgia and those who could afford it would “return” to taste the freedom of the wild once again. After reading William Cronon (The Trouble With Wilderness) and G. Stanley Kane (Restoration or Preservation: Reflections On a Clash of Environmental Philosophies) I'm giving Teddy a second thought. Now, looking at his accomplishments and beliefs, seeing where we are now, and where we are likely to go, I have a few questions. What are we conserving? And what is the best way to go about doing it. There are so many things to think about. And only so much space.

Jumping off an insightful comment from geoeliot, “who loved [the wilderness] more than the People who had kept it well for thousands of years?” This is a really good point. Where is the legitimacy in our Government removing Native Americans from the land that was to become national parks, forest, etc. in order to “protect” it? This relocation of the native people is a perfect example of our dualist attitude towards the environment. As if we were visitors rather than part of the system, part of nature itself. I am not comfortable thinking of humanity as outside nature. I prefer Kane’s community model of joint responsibility and trust, how can you deny interdependence?

I want to go back to my last two cartoons a moment and the concept of the great American wilderness. There are two types of “wilderness” as I see it. (1) The Biblical wilderness, a savage, inhospitable wasteland that tested Adam and Eve, Moses, Jesus, a place where you can lose yourself very quickly. This is the wilderness humans have fought to tame, to farm, to mould to their purposes. This is the wilderness you find when you get lost in the woods, when the brambles get too thick and you don’t know where home is. Anyone who has ever truly spent time alone and scared in Nature knows this wilderness. (2) Post-Frontier wilderness. The ideal that civilized people have about a wilderness that in reality is no wilderness at all. It is the myth, especially ingrained in American hearts, of the wild frontier where men are true men unburdened by civilization, where truth and freedom reign. Was this ever the case? What a national park is is domesticated. It is policed. It is guided. It is created. I might even risk saying it is unnatural. For goodness sake, what kind of wilderness has boundaries? It merely embodies the myth of perfection, sanctity, and absolute truth. It is a purely romantic notion. So, what would we be conserving then, since these nationally controlled bits of land are fabricated? I think my problem with this is only a problem of definition. I am simply arguing that it is not wilderness. I’m not sure where there still exists true wilderness. But that is a inquiry for another time.

Look! John Muir and T.R. at Glacier Point in Yosemite!