Wilderness and the American Mind

The perceived need to preserve and protect wilderness versus the view that cultivation of wilderness is central to humanity’s betterment is the primary tension that this book explores. Across almost all eras of US Post-Independence history, the ways that these two ends of the spectrum played out and sometimes balanced is at the heart of the book. In every chapter but the first two, Nash examines how the needs of a growing civilization tempered the preservation movement’s momentum. The chapter on Hetch Hetchy perhaps best exemplifies this tension. While preservationists made the ethical appeal that such a pristine wilderness should remain free from human interference, those who supported the dam project pointed out the need for access to water in the growing metropolis of San Francisco. Both sides were justified in their positions, and Nash remains objective in framing the debate. Within this tension is the question of how humanity and the natural world can best coexist.

Unlimited exploitation of nature and its resources, however, was not an explicitly stated goal of many utilitarian proponents. In many ways, preservationism is a balancing force, a needed antithesis that forces a reckoning with the human potential for permanently changing the environment.