SummitPost.org

Wilderness is a place unfamiliar to you. It doesn't have to be dense woods or inhabited by bears. It's a place that you don't know your way around, don't necessarily want to be in and can get easily lost.

jdzaharia wrote:"Wilderness" is a place where you do not want to spend an unplanned night.

East L.A. South Bronx. All of Ohio.

Actually, I like your idea and had a similar one myself: "Where if you get hurt, you're in deep shit." But then I've been places where wilderness is steps from the car.

Actually, I like your idea and had a similar one myself: "Where if you get hurt, you're in deep shit." But then I've been places where wilderness is steps from the car.

I was just about to post something to this effect. Wilderness medicine protocols take effect 1/2 an hour or more from definitive care, which isn't far at all if you're hurt and on foot. But it definitely applies as well to plenty of roaded areas, even some with pavement. There are lots of parts of, say, southwestern New Mexico, central Idaho, eastern Oregon that feel pretty darn wild, roads notwithstanding. Indeed, I wish there was some legal provision besides wilderness designation for leaving these areas alone. Disqualifying them due do a few spindly roads is a pretty anthropocentric aesthetic judgment. The wildlife sometimes feels differently; in New Mexico, the re-introduced wolves seem to spend more time in the ranching outback, preferring it to the much rougher terrain of the designated wilderness areas.

Don't get me wrong, the deep vast wilderness areas of the northern Rockies are incredible and there's no substitute for that kind of remoteness and protection. But it's nice to be able to appreciate wildness in areas that do show human impact. I was struck by this when I was in eastern Turkey last fall. There's not much there that we Americans would call pristine, but it's some pretty wild country nonetheless.

MikeTX wrote:believe it or not, texas has so-called wilderness areas.

Guadalupe Mountains NP is mostly a federally-designated wilderness. With good reason IMHO.

A similar proposal for most of Big Bend NP was killed by locals who like the 4WD roads north of the river and mostly SW, S & SE of the Chisos. It's pretty wild stuff though.

Bob Sihler wrote:

jdzaharia wrote:"Wilderness" is a place where you do not want to spend an unplanned night.

East L.A. South Bronx. All of Ohio.

Ha ha, yes. But, like the point of my previous post, not ALL places where you don't want to spend an unplanned night are wilderness. Heck, a coworker almost had to spend an unplanned night at work when he got locked in the hallway to the bathrooms. While that would really stink, it's not wilderness.

Above Lake Tahoe in California, there was a sign - "A permit is required to enter the wilderness." I didn't fill it in, because there was no wilderness around anywhere there.



To me, wilderness is unroaded land, vast, and if you're lost, it will take you days to get back. Forest or mountaineous presumably. But that's simply because that's the way it is here.


That other thing, it's simply "nature".

We humans are just kidding ourselves. It is all wilderness, just filled with more or less of our shit.

jdzaharia wrote: Heck, a coworker almost had to spend an unplanned night at work when he got locked in the hallway to the bathrooms. While that would really stink, it's not wilderness.

priceless!

Lolli wrote:To me, wilderness is unroaded land, vast, and if you're lost, it will take you days to get back. Forest or mountaineous presumably. But that's simply because that's the way it is here.

Sweden needs a desert. Or tundra. Or prairie. Or a really big cave.

You can get lost in any of those, very well.

FortMental wrote:Didn't Moses find wilderness? And look at who he ran into.....

Let my people go !

BLong wrote:My favorite parts of the legal definition are locations that offer opportunities for "solitude or primitive and unconfined recreation" and are "untrammeled by man."

"Solitude" is certainly not wilderness, especially if it includes recreation. It just isn't wild, it's a human use of land.

"Untrammeled": now that's more like it!

My favorite wild place isn't very big: Porcupine Ridge in Kananaskis. It's described as a "trail" in a couple of guide-books, but when I explored there, there was not any kind of sign of human visitation. Except for a couple of peanut shells about 2 km from the start. Last year, however, I found two small fire-rings in the woods. So it's still pretty wild, but I'm worried about over-use.

So then I tried exploring further along the creek. About 5 km up the valley, the only sign of humans was a patch of grass that I had trammeled previously. So now I choose to leave it alone.

I've found several areas, at least a few kilometers across either dimension, that have been un-touched, even if they are within hearing of the highway, with cell-phone coverage, too. The big animals -- sheep, elk, and bears -- enjoy these areas in total peace. You can find plenty of evidence that they are using the hills regularly, and no sign of human visitation. I'd call that wilderness.

These wild areas that I've explored are generally difficult terrain, sometimes all class 3 or worse. But more importantly they do not provide access to recreation. I mean, the upper ends of the valleys have interesting rocky slopes and peaks, but these tend to be chossy and not prominent peaks. They are not destinations for hikers and scramblers.

When humans discover a "use" for a piece of terrain, it's used, abused, mis-used, and its character is altered in certain ways -- it's not wilderness anymore. And that's the key: any land can be wilderness, until we make it a destination for our use.

This negative definition means that all wilderness is on-notice that they can enjoy their peace, but only until we take over.

I always thought as a wilderness... anyplace where you can't quickly reach an outside road in less than a day's hike.

I guess the forest service's definition - is any land where logging is not allowed and the area must be left in it's natural state.

Arthur Digbee wrote:

Lolli wrote:To me, wilderness is unroaded land, vast, and if you're lost, it will take you days to get back. Forest or mountaineous presumably. But that's simply because that's the way it is here.

Sweden needs a desert. Or tundra. Or prairie. Or a really big cave.

You can get lost in any of those, very well.

Oh, I would have loved that!


What's real wilderness to me, is the jungle. If meaning one doesn't know one's ways around, don't know what's dangerous or not, don't know how to find the way etc, then I'd say jungle. Don't know much about deserts either, but a little bit more than about jungles.

Wilderness to me is any place away from civilization where I feel I can enjoy quiet and calm.

dan2see wrote:"Untrammeled": now that's more like it!

Does that mean "no trail" ? I think a lot of us have been on a trail and felt we were in a wild place.

To return to the OP, after we had bushwhacked through the rhododendrons we reached the summit. I'd been there before, and the group knew that. Still, they said, "It's so cool being someplace no one else has ever been before!"

"Uh, didn't I tell you that I've been here before?"

"But you don't count."