Wilderness is the best source, argue its proponents, for an absolute absorption in the experience of both the sublime – that which thrills us with wonder with intimations of our own mortality – and the beautiful, in the forms of wild nature. In the wild is the constant, real danger of the elements of nature, or its wild creatures, turning against us, injuring or killing us. From one wilderness area to another, such dangers are more or less extreme, and the risk is very much dependent on the knowledge of those travelling through the area. In general, those with local expertise may be in far less danger, however, wherever nature is out of our control, there is bound to be some element of genuine danger. In wilderness, it is possible to experience a sense of rapturous wonder and awe at both the thrill of the wild being out of control and its sheer force and power in this regard, from the microscopic level of pathogens in the air, soil, water, plants, and toxins from spiders, ticks, and snakes, to the wild windy mountainside where the lighting strikes or the desert or ocean, where we are exposed to the extremes of temperature and the elements. Here the beauty and sheer pleasure of absorption in the complexity of its sensuous forms, the sublime and the beautiful are inseparable.
There is a difference between experiencing wilderness as a place through which we can only pass and never remain, and experiencing wilderness as a place of habitation. There is something romantic and ungraspable about the wilderness in which we cannot remain, but at the same time, the entire concept becomes a mere abstraction when we return home, and a mere means to that fleeting experience—effectively, an experience to consume for one‘s own ends, utilizing the environment itself as a mere abstract commodity: the experience and representations of the experience in paintings, postcards, and essays, become endlessly exchangeable, and what are being bought and sold are notions: ―pristine‖, ―sublime‖, ―natural beauty‖, ―wilderness‖. We gaze over copies of Caspar David Friedrich‘s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, or Peter Dombrovski‘s Rock Island Bend, read Burke, Wordsworth and Thoreau, and write essays for our own artworks as we explore this fetish of wilderness, like the so- called ―nature-porn‖ that uses images of wild nature in advertising to sell everything from beer and soap to cars, or the fantasy landscapes in films like Avatar; the hyperreal wilderness,
infinitely removed from any event. For Kant, the sense of the sublime as coming from wild nature was a projected illusion, for the sublime was truly our subjective recognition of the limits of imagination, thought and its contradictions. Let us once again recall his words on this:
. . . true sublimity must be sought only in the mind of the one who judges, not in the object of in nature, the judging of which occasions this disposition in it. And who would want to call sublime shapeless mountain masses towering above one another in wild disorder with their pyramids of ice, or the dark and raging sea, etc.? (2000, p.139)
For Kant, the true source of the wondrous thrill experienced in wilderness was entirely subjective, nothing to do with the kind of environment experienced.
For someone who actually lives in a wilderness, however, as this different understanding of wilderness allows, any sense of supposedly sublime wonder or thrill will always be far closer to actual dangers, and the possibilities of pain and death. One needs to take responsibility for one‘s own safety and that of others. The novelty and thrill of so-called ―sublime terror‖ will cease to be experienced in such sharp contrast to the rest of life, but rather must be incorporated as part of its natural rhythm—it loses its superficiality, its abstract
Eros/Thanatos. So too, the sense of wondrous rapture and sensuous pleasure at the endless beauty of wild nature must cease being beautiful because exotic and rare as opposed to the banalities of urban life, but must be understood as balanced, indeed, by the banalities and harsh realities and horrors of wild life. At the same time, possible in all this in a way impossible in the received wilderness idea, is a deepening sense of relationship with wild nature, relating those inner, subjective elements Kant identifies as the source of the sense of the sublime back to a wild nature that in itself lacks any subjective element, and is not for
human beings, as recognized by Muir, but may still be a source of something sublime or not both beyond and within our own subjectivity. Specifically, there is the opportunity to develop a relationship not with an idealized nature, but with that wild other, as Rolston urges, as an end in itself, and by so doing develop the subtlest and deepest elements of the human spirit
further than was previously possible. And yet if we follow Murdoch‘s conception again, it is our own imaginations and love for the particularity of each other and nature that gives rise to the sublime. Again, this can only be an abstraction inviting endless manipulation unless actually, directly engaged in an ongoing, inclusive relationship.
If we allow the possibility of human habitation and modification of wilderness within appropriate limits, the chances for testing whether it has unique qualities capable of inspiring the very greatest works of the human intellect and creativity become much greater. Not only is it possible to survey existing works of art and literature for elements of wild inspiration, it becomes possible to allow artists and writers to participate in genuine, extended wilderness
residencies (which may include travel to and from cities) where they can combine solitude and possibilities for inspiration from nature and from within, with the further research and development of the domain specific knowledge they need to spend years mastering in order to produce great works. In fact, artists and writers could even move, over time, between different wilderness areas and different cities, to increase the possibilities for inspiration and skills development.
In present research into the origins and conditions for the creation of great works that express what we call genius, there are two major conflicting theories: that of Simonton (1999) and others, on the one hand, with its emphasis on spontaneous, random Darwinian-like processes often induced by various forms of stress and tension verging on madness, and that of Weisburg (1993, 2006), that there is no such thing as inspired genius, and that rather, creativity comes as a result of time spent developing crucial domain specific expertise. Both use numerous historical examples and psychological experiments as case studies. It is my contention that both of these viewpoints are correct in their own ways, and that wilderness presents the optimal possibilities for developing both together, in their very contradictions, when the relationships between wilderness and human psychology, development and limitations are better understood.
The chance to inhabit and form a genuinely interactive relationship with wilderness allows for genuinely participatory research and an ability to measure different kinds of parameters over time, and the possibility of identifying those predispositions, if any, that can be genuinely enhanced by a sustained wilderness experience, as well as experimentations with different kinds of wilderness experience. With the possibility of human interaction with and habitation of wilderness, nature‘s laboratory is opened so we may observe ourselves. The capacity to spend significant time, from days to years or even decades, in wilderness allows for deeper study of the relationship between cognitive processes and specific environmental qualities. A continued presence in and interaction with wilderness allows the possibility of tracking links between health and wellbeing and relationship qualities and potentials for cognitive and creative development, and to compare these with urban groups, and establish adequate experimental controls.
But wilderness, as we have seen, also gives us access to something beyond such instrumental reasoning. In triggering creativity and ―genius‖, it is worth reminding ourselves that for Kant, Novalis, and others, genius was essentially imaginative and intuitive, not something that could be held by any concept, but a wild play of ideas in the realm of lived experience as it happens. So too, the experience that triggers such profoundly liberating expressive responses in the works of art we might label as works of genius must be treated in a more than instrumental way, particularly when it seems to be instrumental reasoning itself that obscures the reality it reveals to us, most of all. Because wilderness areas are free from the physical structures that ground this instrumental reasoning, they allow for such an opening to what is both beyond and prior to it. This might be even more important than any essential ecological benefits wilderness provides us and the planet with, for only by recognizing such a possibility can we even think beyond reasons for, and have the freedom of consciously existing in and beholding the mystery that enfolds us, something that gives life a meaning beyond reason altogether, that reason only in its greatest moments, can recognize and allow.
These then—biodiversity and life-support, the potential for research and ecological development, and the sublime, ethically and creatively, even erotically—if we follow Murdoch, Bataille, and the scrawling on the cave wall—inspiring values of wilderness— seem, together, like extremely strong reasons for retaining the revised concept of wilderness, striving to protect what it represents, and unequivocally rejecting and abandoning the so- called Received Wilderness Idea. A very serious problem remains, however, that prevents this from being realized.