I've already largely covered this in the course of this discussion and elsewhere: that the concept of "wilderness" is commonly bound to an environment relatively untouched by human activity and design which is certainly a useful conceptual unity with applications for narrative and argument. Seeing as how most of the world's population now lives in urban environments, a spatially and socially remote space that is relatively undeveloped is necessarily experienced as something wholly different from daily perception in a built environment, with a host of practical and subjective consequences following that.
So when we talk about a wilderness, we often visualize a dark woods with limited lines of sight. There may be spooky bird and insect calls emanating from somewhere in the background, and out just beyond in the darkness there may lurk some sort of shadowy apex predator ready to sink its teeth into you if you let your guard down.
This menacing imagery and the feelings it evokes can also be transferred to other contexts to make a point. A certain social/political environment that is steadily growing more chaotic and dangerous may be referred to as a "wilderness of horrors" or some such phrasing, for example, to appeal to a certain sensibility for evaluating the situation.
We see that the concept can be moved around. I've also established that by suggesting that the built environment in the United States (and elsewhere) is more and more resembling a wilderness. The flexibility of the concept can further be demonstrated by going into the heart of the default imagery itself.
For most of the year, I live fairly deep in a "dark woods," a so-called "wilderness," but we wouldn't call the surrounding area a wilderness. You might get more of a wilderness the deeper you travel into the woods, away from any kind of habitation, but even the "wildness" of the immediate surrounding woods is experienced as "home" to us. After some initial acclimation and familiarization, the surrounding woods are now intimately familiar, readily recognizable, and well-understood.
There is the occasional passing bear or cougar, but one picks up on the signs when they are around and one knows how to take care around them. The owl calls in the middle of the night are lovely, and there are all sorts of other welcome background noises that one appreciates when one gets to know them.
Indeed, I feel safer in that particular corner of the woods than just about anywhere else. The dark can be disorienting, even upon being very close to my dwelling, and things are quite unsettling there when there is a storm and all the trees are swaying and groaning under the strain. And the tension is palpable when there is a high fire danger in the summer, or when some jackass is firing his gun into the woods nearby.
If I were to wander deeper and deeper into the woods in any direction, to the point of no longer recognizing my surroundings, then I would begin to get the sense again that I was in a wilderness. At the same time, that circumstance has been somewhat counteracted over the years after extensive exploration in the area, widening the scope of my familiarity.
You don't have to know every little detail in your neighborhood to become comfortable in it. I've become familiar with the basic direction and sound of the Carbon River in the south, the upward sweep of the hill terrain to the north and the contours of the land, identifiable trees of a certain character in various areas, other landmarks, and so on.
If you know what to expect given any direction of travel, and you are operating with regularity in a certain area that has a stability of daily occurrence, with a procession of events and phenomena you can confidently incorporate into the daily rhythms of your life, then you can feel more at "home" there, and it appears as less of a wilderness.
There are other phenomenological aspects to feeling a certain way in a certain environment, which we could briefly illustrate by looking at additional features of where I live. I can actually experience moving back and forth through various gradations of wilderness-feeling and perception, depending on my immediate surroundings.
At the homestead where I live and work, we have a nice bench at the edge of the woods where the forest ends and a clearcut begins, which offers a sweeping view of the canyon to the west. It is a nice place to watch the sunset. With the high visibility that the clearcut affords, looking out to the west triggers that feeling of familiarity and dependability, but you also know that further in that direction is more wilderness, while behind you, back inside the dark forest, your vision is cut off and you can't see inside, giving an air of the unknown and a feeling of uncertainty, even though back in that direction is home.
As the sun goes down, you start getting that feeling: "There goes the remaining light and heat, better get inside." A wilderness descends through the dark and cold. Upon turning back, you get this odd sensation. Because of the higher light levels outside of the forest, you turn around to go back into the woods to go home but your vision cannot penetrate beyond the first row of trees, and that feeling of the wilderness comes back: for a moment you are entering back into the wilderness and the unknown. But then as soon as you are back in the woods, and your eyes adjust to the lower light inside, you recognize all of the trees and pathways within, and the fleeting feeling of the wilderness goes away. You are back home.
On the other hand, the built environment - which was supposedly built to facilitate the comfortable life activity of humans such as myself - is a place of increasing contention where I (and plenty of others) feel increasingly unsettled. We've covered that contention previously: all of the many scams out there, supposedly welcoming and helpful symbols which ensnare you and then drain you of your resources, or the failing infrastructure which is increasingly unstable, or the increasingly erratic and troubled behavior of fellow humans under too much pressure, or the silent, invisible pathogens which travel through the air, which we stopped addressing or even tracking. Or what about the lone nuts that suddenly open fire on a public space? Or the roving bands of marauder-crusaders we call ICE? Oh I could go on.
Further, by disrespecting the natural world, forcing it to do what we want while refusing to acknowledge its nature, all the while exhausting it and demanding ever more of it, the natural world has no recourse but to flow to whatever outlets it can, as it now increasingly intercedes into the built environment forcefully, in the form of natural disasters and other inconveniences.
And also as I've illustrated before, the forces of the wild tend to bring out the wild in us, and there is a wilderness in us that can be explored by going into the wild, or simply turning inward and exploring deep into our inner wilds from the comfort of our homes through various meditative practices.
So the wilderness can change and shift around, depending on where you are, what you are, and what you are doing. As I've been saying for ages, this has important practical applications. We're finally going to get to those next, and put this albatross of a series to rest.
