“Alaska is already more amazing than I could have imagined. I really don’t know what I expected. A lot of wilderness for sure, but the people I’ve met, the thoughts they’ve shared with me, the magic of nature dripping everywhere I turn, the traces of creation and destruction with each step, is all beyond the idea of wilderness I had prior to coming here. The wilderness I have found here is a deep connection and respect between all living things. The idea that we are a part of a larger and very necessary ecosystem is ever apparent. I can see where I’ve come from, the people and history that have led up to me, and my respect grows bigger and bigger with the more I unearth. Lives here are so deeply intertwined with the land that wilderness doesn’t just mean nature, but people as well. So, if we want to protect the land, then we want to protect the people and their identities too. These are all ideas I had before and yet somehow they seem so distant when I reflect back just a few months. These Alaskan identities have also taught me about mine. We are all wild things too, but for so long I was taught that I’m to be tame. Now here I am; a tame thing grown wild in a matter of weeks.”
Reading my own past writings I go through an array of emotion: embarrassment to inspiration. It can be a bit painful to poke through old thoughts, especially my handwritten ones. They tend to be more free flowing attempts to wan poetically and unapologetically. A version of me that can be hard to keep up with sometimes, but probably the part of me I owe for all my goals and aspirations and the motivation to live them into reality! I thought I might share this piece edited, but I decided that anything other than my original thoughts wouldn’t paint the lovely picture that once I can get pass the pure mortification of whimsical, past Ali, I can soak in and mull over the tidbits of wisdom.
When I came to Alaska, I already had an understanding of wilderness and our connection to it. These were ideas I read, thought, and wrote about often. If I had ever read a rambling such as the one above while I was back in Arizona I would have rolled my eyes. “You go to “The Last Frontier” and think the rest of us don’t understand these concepts? These are ideas that touch all of us!” And it’s true. The concept of nature, wilderness, and our connections to them are everywhere. Hiding in little pockets of our communities we wouldn’t even think to consider! I would have hated to think that the wilderness in Alaska was any more special than the wilderness people can find in the city. I still won’t say it is either. It is different though! There is a different type of special found in Alaskan wilderness than the special in places I visited back home. Not better in my mind, but definitely different. It’s this difference that allowed me to view things in a new light.
A lot of people have a very specific definition of wilderness. Merriam-Webster defines wilderness as: “an area essentially undisturbed by human activity together with its naturally developed life community”. In The Wilderness Act of 1964, our nation went even further to lay out the meaning of this word, which you can read here if you’d like. But most of us have our own personal meaning of wilderness. Proper definitions fall to the wayside when it comes to our intimate relationships with the world. At first, being surrounded by people who had what appeared to be a stricter version of wild meant frustrating to me. It seemed to leave out others who experienced the same kind of natural magic and inspiration in the outdoors simply because what they had access to was a smaller and different space. However, when I realized that people were included in this version of wilderness things began to click for me in a new way. The standard definition, and even our nation’s version of wilderness, doesn’t include people. We are the opposite of wilderness in these definitions! In Alaska though, it seemed many people saw that wilderness was reflected in them. This beautiful idea of humans being a part of the landscape stretched my idea of conservation. If we are to preserve the land, than we are to preserve people too. We have to care and tend to the various human communities we’re surrounded by. And not just the ones whose ties to the land we can clearly see.
The lovely truth is this: we all have ties to the land. Whether we choose to see and understand those ties or not, every person has a personal connection with the land. So many of us have deep, intimate relationships with the same land too, we all begin to overlap. Conservation is not simply about landscapes, but the other people who find a piece of themselves in those landscapes too. It’s not enough to care for the environment. We must also open up our ideas of wilderness and preservation to include those outside of our current grasp of the earth.
When I think about wilderness, I think about all the people connected to that idea as well. I remember that even though it means something different to us all, even different from the traditional definitions, all our experiences deserved to be heard and respected still. I realize that my idea of conservation isn’t just about preaching my thoughts and practices, but actually about listening to gain a better understanding of our communities. What does wilderness mean to you and how does it manifest in your life?