Wilderness and the American Mind

The US, as a relatively young country, needed a unifying vision, a shared set of values that could uniquely distinguish it from its European cousins. According to Nash, the infusion of wilderness into the national character was an intentional act to satisfy this need. In fact, a new nationalistic sentiment became prevalent and was an early force favoring preservationism. After the nation gained independence, the tendency to glorify natural landmarks—for example, the Mississippi River—grew significantly. Nash points to Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia and illustrates that in some ways, the work defended America’s natural characteristics. While Europeans saw the American wilderness as representing a lack of civilization, Jefferson and others saw it as representing virtue and purity. As an exercise in contrast, many notable and influential Americans saw the ways that the advance of civilization in Europe entirely overcame wilderness as an opportunity for the US to differentiate itself from Europe, which had developed much of its wilderness. The American wilderness was so vast that nationalists saw it as a means to carve out a vision of America that made wilderness part of national identity.

Nash moves into a discussion on how the arts contributed to the integration of wilderness into the American identity.