wĭl'dər-nĭs

By the time I described my tenth painting from the art museum, some patterns had definitely emerged among the adjectives I was using. My ten landscapes varied in season, number of people, types of habitats, and presence or absence of buildings, but they were all describable by similar terms: serene, peaceful, warm, etc. Really, the common thread throughout the paintings was the fact that all scenes were outdoors. So is that it? Has wilderness always just encompassed anything that exists outside of shelter? The more I think about defining wilderness, the more the term becomes like the “other.” The concept of “other” depends on being undefined – once you can define an entity you tame the entity, don’t you? At the very least you take the entity out of the shadows and shine a little light on it, and once something is no longer unknown the mystique certainly fizzles. Like the domestication of plants, animals, and entire landscapes, anything in those paintings identifiable as components of wilderness were not (as we’ve addressed in class) separate from man. In fact, all paintings depicted scenes of nature quite pleasing to human sensibilities. Surely this trend largely reflects the fact that the scenes are indeed paintings, and that some man (my paintings were all produced by men) had to deem the landscapes worthy of painting in the first place. Most paintings were also of landscapes that had been altered somehow by human use (e.g. erected villages, agriculture, and recreation). Maybe those painters would have seen their landscapes as distinct from wilderness, relegating wilderness to the outskirts surrounding these carved-out spaces of appreciated beauty. If I try to find comparable carved-out spaces in Chicago (little windows of nature that share the inviting and restful qualities of the paintings) I think of the parks and parkways around town. And while the outskirts of these Chicago natural spaces would differ from the outskirts of the landscapes from the 1800’s, I think both could be considered wilderness. Couldn’t a case be made for downtown Chicago being just as wild as the uncharted landscapes of the 19^th century? Stepping out of a quiet city park, back into the urban jungle with the roar of traffic, the almighty cry of automobile horns, the screeches of angry brakes, waves of crowded streets, etc. sure seems as daunting as being lost in a more traditional wilderness composed of plants and animals. So maybe wilderness can’t be defined by using physical distinctions such as vegetation, organic matter, mineral, bricks, or asphalt. I think wilderness is a state of mind, and I’m starting to feel a sneaking suspicion that the term can’t be defined by identifying what it is but instead by defining what it isn’t – like negative space. Or better yet, like the nighttime stars that aren’t visible when looked at directly but can still be seen quite clearly using peripheral vision.