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The thing I found most interesting about The Secret Knowledge of Water was how the desert, a rather unconventional environment, served as the backdrop for a classic story of solitary, adventurous, and even spiritual travel in the desert. It made me think about the desert, and in thinking about the desert I realized I’d never really given it any thought before. I definitely fall into the camp of associating wilderness with mountains, probably because I’ve grown up around a lot of mountains and it’s where most of my outdoor experiences have taken place. Thinking about wilderness and why we care about it in the context of the desert helped me think more about some of my own values and assumptions and realize that the reasons I value mountains and forests can apply more broadly to all environments.
Many of the benefits I think wilderness can give to people are in the traditional romantic view of wilderness. The most important is that being in wilderness allows us to test ourselves and be humbled by our own powerlessness. I think being in nature can humble you and awe you with the beauty and complexity of the environment and that can be a very profound experience. I also think wilderness can offer people a place to escape from all the technology and stress of normal life, which is only becoming more important with time as our society changes. What surprised me so much when reading Childs’ story was that he experienced all of these benefits in a place I’d never imagined could amaze and humble you because I’ve never thought of the desert as very complex or beautiful.
The personal nature of this book made me think about my own experiences outdoors and it surprised me to realize how similar the things Childs thought about in a desert are to things I’ve experienced too. I grew up mostly in the Pacific Northwest and my parents are Park Rangers so I spent a lot of time outside as a kid but have only really come back to hiking and such on my own in the last few years. I find myself very drawn to mountains, possibly in a similar way that Childs identifies with deserts because they represent home and his family/parents, so almost all of the outdoor experience I’ve had has been in mountains. What I’d like to do now is go through a few photos from my most memorable outdoor experiences and connect those experiences to the similar ideas I found in Childs’ book.
(Mt. Fyffe, New Zealand)
One similarity that I’d never considered before reading Childs’ book is between mountains and deserts. I think in the desert Childs feels fear and awe at the power of the inhospitable environment around him and that the challenge of living in that environment is a test that sharpens your senses and makes you appreciate the fragility of life. This is clearly true for mountains as well. This day hike was the first real mountain I’ve summited and even though it was an easy, non-technical climb I was still struck by how extreme the environment was and how easily I could take what I was looking at, extrapolate it to a few times higher and steeper and more technical, and imagine how scary and invigorating that would be.
(Welcome Flats, New Zealand)
(Routeburn Track [Great Walk], New Zealand)
One difference that was really noticeable between New Zealand and my limited knowledge of conservation in the US is that the protected lands in New Zealand are substantially more developed. The best example of this is the huge number of backcountry huts, which range from the really nice huts pictured here (containing mattresses, running water, drop or even flush toilets, often firewood that’s been lifted in by helicopter, and sometimes a hut warden) to small bivouacs that contain only two mattresses and maybe a candle holder. They have an immense network of trails with various degrees of maintenance, from awesome suspension bridges to just occasional orange markers on trees where you have to cross rivers in between. The high-end example of developing protected land for tourism is the nine “great walks”, including the Routeburn Track, which provide a lot of revenue for the Department of Conservation (high season hut tickets are $50 a night). These are very maintained with multiple huts along the way. When I did the Routeburn Track it was just towards the end of avalanche season so they had been using dynamite to bring down snow above the trail and were offering a subsidized helicopter ride across the one remaining part of the track that was closed so visitors could complete the whole trail. I think this is a great example of different views on conservation.
(Abel Tasman Track [Great Walk], New Zealand)
The main reason I bring up how developed much of the protected land in New Zealand is is to make the point that meaningful experiences with nature can happen outside of what’s strictly defined as “wilderness”. None of the places pictured are wilderness, and in fact, I’m not sure that I’ve ever been in a true wilderness. The closest I came to wilderness was a few hiking trips where we carried tents and water and hiked on less of a trail and more of a bushwhack between markers – but of course there was still a visible human impact in these places. However, I still often had a sense of having these places to myself – when the environment around you is so huge and beautiful and stunning I don’t think another few people makes a difference. This is shown above in pictures of a 3-day hike in New Zealand’s most visited National Park where we rarely saw other hikers.
(Welcome Flats, New Zealand)
To go back to the powerful experiences that people can find in nature, as found in Childs: wilderness can test you, help you realize how little you know and how sheltered your usual life is, give you time and space away to think and connect with the environment, humble you with your insignificance and the power of nature, and amaze you with the beauty and complexity of the environment. I want to argue that all of these experiences are possible outside of wilderness, too. Of course there’s a certain romantic appeal to the solitary adventures of Childs or Muir, but the fact is that a lot of the meaning of those experiences comes from exclusion – that they’re the only ones in these places and that most people cannot, for whatever reason, do the same. I think idealizing that sort of experience is harmful because it’s not something that the general public can have. If we want people to care about the environment they need to be able to experience it, and we need to admit that just because an area isn’t wilderness doesn’t mean it has no value. One of my greatest moments of appreciation of the environment was hiking 7 hours in the rain to get to the natural hot pools in the picture above and soaking in the pools with my friends appreciating how unspoiled they are despite all the visitors and then seeing an avalanche come down one of the surrounding mountains.
(Milford Sound, New Zealand)
Accepting that there is value in places where people have visited is, in my opinion, the first step towards a better philosophy of how to manage the land. There is an inherent contradiction that wilderness advocates don’t seem to address, which is that these powerful experiences of Childs and Muir can only happen in sacred untouched places where you’re the only one. It is not possible for all of us to have that, but if we admit that a view is beautiful regardless of if you’re standing on a trail or other people are around, it becomes clear that we need to change our value system so the value of an environment is not determined by how many people are there but by its actual ecological and aesthetic value. We should set some land, like wilderness, aside for biocentric purposes regardless of human concerns and then allow access to other areas. I think only by seeing nature with your own eyes can you appreciate and value it, so we should not demean places like the Grand Canyon or Milford Sound because they are touristy.
The last point I want to make is that valuing landscapes other than the traditional romantic wilderness allows us to be amazed by a wider range of places and appreciate the environment as we interact with it in everyday life. We should not say that just because we’re in a city people can’t feel elated as they walk through the quad when the cherry trees are in bloom. I think we should encourage people to stop and look even for a few seconds when the mountain is out because that kind of connection of the environment to us is what makes people want to protect the environment. I think one of the greatest lessons I learned from all the time I spent hiking in New Zealand is that you should notice the beauty all around you, no matter how much it is wilderness.
