Walter Biller:

     You raise a very deep question about nature preserves resembling
     theme parks. I think that the question of how late 20th century
     americans view natural areas is central to the environmental
     debate.

     I have a inchoate sense, largely unarticulated in my own mind,
     that in fact, there has been a patina of "theme parkness" applied
     to many publicly owned natural areas. They've acquired a
     sanctified aura that seems defined by our own particular culture
     and time. After all, if we lived in natural areas, and had to
     struggle with "nature" to make our livelihoods, these natural
     areas would take on a significantly different meaning. Wilderness
     as paradise is a very complex trope: indeed some people living in
     apparent wildernesses need to spend very little of their time on
     what we would consider "work," hence the image of South
     Seas paradises. Others who live in less yielding environments
     have to expend tremendous labor to survive, and their lives would
     look much less like paradise to us.

     The transition, from wilderness as habitat to wilderness as, as
     Walter suggests, theme park, is addressed by Bill Cronon (a
     wonderful writer, whose "Changes in the Land" I heartily
     recommend) in a recent article in the New York Times Magazine
     section called something about "Wilderness." He's got a very
     subtle point to make, which is completely offset by the
     photographs that accompany the article.

     This subject of the image of wilderness is intrinsic to a site
     exhibition program that I am doing here at the New York Botanical
     Garden (where we have one of the region's only first growth
     forests, 40 acres of hemlock/native hardwood) recently funded by
     the NEH.  So, I have spent the last two years thinking about
     subjects along these lines. I have a good bibliography, if
     anyone's interested.

     Eric Siegel
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     Eric Siegel
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