I have been fortunate to have read a variety of wilderness narratives, all of which have been adding to the ever-growing quilt that is wilderness in my mind. Leopold, Carson, Abbey, Estés, Atwood, and others have contributed to this quilt. The wilderness narrative that has deeply influenced my perceptions of wilderness as of late is a Southern myth called “La Loba”, which is retold by Clarissa Pinkola Estés in her book Women Who Run with Wolves. “The sole work of La Loba is the collecting of bones. She collects and preserves especially that which is in danger of being lost to the world. Her cave is filled with the bones of all manner of desert creatures: the deer, the rattlesnake, the crow. But her specialty is wolves” (25). The story goes on explaining how La Loba sings over the bones until they become flesh and the animal leaps up and runs off, eventually turning into a running and laughing woman. This running woman could be seen as stripping herself of the “otherness” Cronon and Vance speak on in “Trouble with Wilderness” and “Ecofeminism and Wilderness” (18 Cronon) (66-68 Vance). These are old crone stories, stories of women in the wild. I hold this myth dear to my heart because it’s a miracle story, a story of resurrection and was handed down orally by the people of the southern lands. There are other versions of her, La Loba, in a wide range of cultures and traditions. Wilderness is everywhere if we look and open up to it, including within.
Wilderness is real in its silence and in its noise, which for people can be happening at the same time. We can be sitting outside and hear nothing but insects if we’re in the right place, and that is real. The trees against gusts of wind are real. Blood and birth…death and decay, oftentimes one right after the other, are very real. As La Loba depicts, we as a species have created cultural and traditional narratives of the wilderness, ones that attempt to translate our relationship with it so it can be understood among the people. These stories can be miracle stories, they can be lessons, they can be roots to our values far before colonialism and gentrification. When the intention moves into the ego to conquer, for example, the stories change. They become stories of greed, stories of violence and stories of treasures that must be “owned” and used, usually in disrespectful ways that lead to the destruction of those treasures. All of these stories depict a change in the values of the wilderness.
The change of values alters the definitions and views of wilderness, especially through the eyes of the wealthy and of the white man, depicted above as the conqueror. A perfect example of this is in my own grandmother’s homeland, Puerto Rico.
The beaches in Puerto Rico have always been for everyone on the island, they were shared gems. The beaches and the ocean raised the people of the island, taught them many lessons, and told them many stories. Now more than ever the non-native wealthy who desire the “pristine” wilderness in their backyard buy out the native people, push them out and try to keep them out. There was a movement that went viral with locals retaliating against the construction of a pool on a public beach. The pool was for apartment complexes that run along the beach on private land, but the pool was being constructed and built on the public beach. The apartments the pool was being built for are too expensive for most of the locals and are usually filled with tourists and foreigners looking for a waterfront view. The pool would have taken away vital nesting grounds from sea turtles who famously go to the various beaches across the island and would have also taken away beach access from the descendants of those who have lived on the island for hundreds of thousands of years. And this is happening all over the world. Wilderness is history, it is the past and the present. Its preservation is the preservation of stories, of ways, of values and of life. How can one continue such stories and ways if concrete takes up the space where they came from? If the water is polluted and doesn't support life like it should? Wilderness is a place of life and memory because it has always been there. Like both Leopold and Cronon explained, wilderness is not untouched by man. Men have always been a raw part of “the wilderness” up until colonialization (the Americas, Africa, India, etc.).
Some emotions I tend to feel in nature are peace, curiosity, awareness, and waves of massive gratitude for the space. Nature evokes a sense of time for me as well, whether that be the past, the present, or the future. And it’s wonderful because I can find myself in nature sitting on my suburban deck. I can find it in the city at a café reading a book and hearing the birds or looking at the sky.
Works Cited
CRONON, WILLIAM. “The Trouble with Wilderness:” Out Of The Woods, 1995, pp. 28–50., https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt7zw9qw.8. Estes, Clarissa Pinkola. “Chapter 1- The Howl: The Resurrection of the Wild Woman.” Women Who Run with Wolves, Rider, London, 1992, pp. 24–26. Vance, Linda. “Ecofeminism and Wilderness.” NWSA Journal, vol. 9, no. 3, 1997, pp. 60–76., https://doi.org/10.2979/nws.1997.9.3.60.