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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