Tray Norman Outside Reading

In the book Wilderness and the American Mind by Roderick Nash, he tries to define the word wilderness. Wilderness has no concrete definition, and the term can be interpreted in many different ways. It is associated with a personal, symbolic, and changing kind, so defining wilderness is not easy. One man's wilderness can be another man's picnic ground. The number of attributes of the wild is almsot as great as the number of obervers. All that we can assume about the definition of wilderness is that it is without the presence of humans, with the presence of animals. Nash goes on to break down and further understand the meaning of wilderness in his book. The root "will" has evolved into "willed" which has evolved into "wild" which is used to convey the idea of being lost, disordered, or confused. The word "wild-doer," which means creatures not under the control of humans, has changed to "wilder" which finally evolved into wilderness. If broken down, the term means "the place of wild beasts." The wilderness is a natural and unmodified area of land that is sacred to humans. The idea of wild beasts implies the absence of men, and it is a place where humans easily become disordered, confused, or in a "wild" condition. The image that wilderness is meant to create is that of a man in a foreign environment where civilization of order and control is absent.