Fall 1999

[TEXT ARCHIVE WEB-PUBLISHED MARCH 2002.
ORIGINAL PRINT PUBLICATION DATE: FALL 1999.]

Wildness and Boundaries

Does this photograph [maple leaf caught in chain-link fence] depict Chicago Wilderness? Is it beautiful, or is it grim? Noble maple leaf caught by an ugly cyclone fence? Or is the fence a helpful barrier to protect some patch of nature?

In the early days of prairie conservation here, Dr. Robert Betz labored heroically to put cyclone fences around our few last beleaguered prairies — as a first step. Some thought the work was over once nature was protected from people.

Environmental historian William Cronon, author of Nature's Metropolis, Chicago and the Great West, delivered an address to the Kennicott Society of the Chicago Academy of Sciences in June. As Cronon analyzed it, wilderness is neither a thing nor a place but is "a profoundly human idea." A product of European romanticism, the idea of wilderness emerges from European notions of the sublime: a notion first embodied in artistic, theatrical images of waterfalls (Niagara!), canyons (Grand!), thunderclouds, mountaintops. So the whole idea of wilderness came as part of the cultural baggage that the European immigrants among our ancestors brought to this new land.

There is, Cronon noted, a fundamental dualism woven into this idea of wilderness — the notion that humans are outside of and in opposition to nature.

Chicago Wilderness, as a vision for this region, profoundly challenges that construct. Indeed, Chicago Wilderness posits a different paradigm: that humans, rather than standing outside of nature, can be a healthy part of healthy nature.

Chicago Wilderness seeks to deconstruct the artificial boundaries that would have us believe rare nature exists only where fenced into "no human impact" areas, places far apart from where we live. The birds and the bees and the butterflies do not respect such boundaries. Neither do aggressive weeds, nor the shady maples that invade and degrade oak woods, nor acid rain. Neither should we.

Consider this fact: Twice a year a colossal flood of birds washes over this region, birds flocking south from the north woods in Wisconsin and Ontario, from the shores of Hudson Bay, from the Arctic tundra. Using river valleys, moraines, and lakefront as migratory corridors, many of these birds find temporary refuge and sustenance for their journeys in local preserves, but many also appear in Chicago Wilderness yards and alleys and streets. Many are eaten by house cats on the loose, or carom into buildings and cell towers, or are poisoned by garden pesticides. For good or ill, our entire region becomes part of this semi-annual nature story, part of this hemisphere's wilderness.

Mushroom collectors fanning out through the woods, maintaining Old World culture in this region, also are a part of Chicago Wilderness, enjoying and appreciating and ingesting it too.

In Peter Friederici's essay, he tells a delightfully human story of nature, how boyhood visits to local wilds inspired and changed him. People, birds, and mushrooms take part in Chicago Wilderness. As hunter-gatherers on five continents, our species has been a part of wildness, as long as we have existed.

So head out to the woods this fall, or stroll along city streets. Watch the maple leaves fight with the oaks, or catch in a fence. Celebrate autumn with the illimitable birds. Inside and outside of boundaries.

Debra Shore may be reached at editor@chicagowildernessmag.org.