Forum from the Archives: What Does Wilderness Mean in our Modern World?
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From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal with a special edition of Forum from the Archives. What is wilderness? A hundred years ago, the federal government defined wilderness in a particular way, based on notions of the landscape we now consider historically inaccurate. But wilderness is also a vibe. It's the way a particular landscape might make you feel, the solitude, the freedom, the absence of human infrastructure.

Marissa Ortega-Welch set out to disentangle our expectations and the reality of wilderness management in a podcast from KALW, How Wild. Lace up your boots, strap on your pack, we head out after this news. Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. You know, when I'm out in some remote place, I hold two basically contradictory thoughts. One is, wow, I'm in nature, I'm in the wild, I'm in connection with everything holy and sacred.

And I'm also usually thinking about every extravagant human system that allows me to have that wandering free experience. The roads I took to get there, the car that carried me there, my technical gear, the laws that mark that space off as special and more worthy of protection than, say, Marin City. And I feel conflicted about all the invisible forces that lead me to be happily wandering through the forest as if that was just natural.

So I was delighted when Discord user and friend of the show, Kenichi, suggested that we give a listen to KLW's new podcast, How Wild, in which host Marissa Ortega-Welch goes deep on all these dynamics. From the exclusion of indigenous perspectives from our wildlife management, wilderness management, to the very precise definition of that weird term, untrammeled.

This is really a podcast about how to love and try to transform a complicated, historically constructed thing. In this case, the wilderness. And really, who has not loved and wanted to transform a complicated, historically constructed thing? Marissa Ortega Welch, welcome to Forum. Thanks for having me. I love that you're thinking about that. That's what I'm thinking about all the time. That's why I made this podcast. Good. So what sets...

wilderness, quote unquote wilderness, apart from other protected lands like national parks or whatever? So wilderness areas are parts of national parks or forests or other federal public lands that get this extra level of protection. And so I use Yosemite Valley as an example. You can drive or take the bus to Yosemite Valley. It's beautiful. It is part of Yosemite National Park and it's protected. But you'd have

to leave behind the roads and buildings of Yosemite Valley and venture off on a trail to enter into a designated wilderness zone. And it is governed by a law, the Wilderness Act of 1964. And, you know, I've got the act here, um,

What are the key parts of this act? Like, what are the components that, you know, capitalize the W on the wilderness? Right. So that's what I break down in the podcast. These areas have to be undeveloped. Right. So roadless. That's fairly straightforward. You could say they have to be natural and they have to be places for solitude and

and primitive recreation. And they also have to be untrammeled. And I am not saying trampled. There's not a P in there. A trammel is a device that's used to shackle a horse. So to be untrammeled means to be unrestrained or free. So in this case, these areas are supposed to be unmanipulated by humans. They're places where nature can just take its course. Yeah.

You know, there is definitely some 60s grooviness about that definition, you know, solitude and primitive recreation, you know. I guess let's start with the idea that this needs to be natural and untrammeled. Your spot to kind of think through this is California's Sequoia National Wilderness. And so why is that the spot to think about what is or is not natural in wilderness?

Yeah, so in the first episode of the podcast, I go to Sequoia National Park because there's this interesting debate that's happening there. I hike to this grove of ancient giant sequoias that burned down in a severe fire. Sequoia National Park has been having these really severe fires since 2020.

Their lightning started fires, so they could be seen as natural. But land managers are saying, look, the conditions of these fires are not natural. They're caused by 100 plus years of keeping fire off the land. Right. So when we do get a lightning storm, there's just a ton of stuff to burn. And then they're exacerbated by climate change conditions like drought.

like more severe drought, like higher temperatures. And so land managers have been debating and ultimately decided to go in and restore in these wilderness areas, even though these were lightning-started fires, because they felt like the fires themselves were not natural and they wanted to correct for that. And where did you land on that? How did you end up feeling about the idea that we should or should not replant these things in this quote-unquote natural area? I...

don't have to make that decision and I'm really glad that I don't. But there are people that feel like, you know,

you know, under the Wilderness Act, you could interpret it as you're not supposed to restore in wilderness unless there's a direct human impact. So like restoring an old trail that you want to take out of commission. And that things like climate change, we shouldn't be going in and restoring. We should sort of leave these wilderness areas as almost like control groups in a science experiment where we have one place where humans don't intervene and, you know, nature should be allowed to decide how it responds even to something like climate change or a severe fire.

But again, land managers are saying, look, we caused climate change. Right. And so therefore, we have a duty, a responsibility, a mandate even right under like the National Park Service to go in and correct for these conditions that we caused under climate change. I was always really struck by a study that came out some years ago about the area around Walden Pond, you know, which, of course, has been protected in many ways for a long time. But of course, climate change has persisted.

He'd preferenced the growth of some things and not others. And spring comes earlier. And if Thoreau were to show back up somehow, he would notice that there were all these differences, even though the land itself hasn't been, you know, actively managed or developed, you know.

Right. Yeah. You know, when the Wilderness Act was first passed, I think it was maybe easy then to think that you could just set aside place from development and that that alone would protect it. Right. That would be enough. But now we can't do that. You can't just set aside an area, put a fence around it and say, OK, we've protected it. Right. Because things like climate change are impacting every part of the planet. Right.

Did you find any difference in yourself between kind of what we're calling, you know, or what you call in the podcast, capital W wilderness, you know, the thing that fits the definition of the Wilderness Act of 1964, and just kind of what you think of as wilderness or what you've experienced, like what's your history of being in wilderness? So I started backpacking in wilderness areas more than 20 years ago.

And I think I came up through this sort of dominant school of thought. I was actually like a product of environmental education. I was taken on a backpacking trip with an environmental group as a teenager. I was taken to Yosemite. And so I was introduced that this is wilderness. And what you do in wilderness is you take really good care not to impact that place to the point of where when we'd clean our pot at night, you know, after dinner, we'd pour it through a sieve to collect the little crumbs and put that in our bear canister.

And so I grew up with that idea. And so when I hike in the Oakland Hills, as much as I love them, I think I do have this sort of value judgment going on where I think, well, this isn't real wilderness. I can see San Francisco from this view. I see more people on the trail. And so in the summertime- Also, you just got run over by a mountain bike. Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah.

So I spent a lot of my free time in the summer trying to get into real wilderness. And that's something I'm interrogating in myself of why do the Oakland Hills, as beautiful as they are, I'm glad that they're there. Why do they feel different to me than capital W wilderness?

We're talking about wilderness, what it means to us, how we like to experience it, the lines we draw around it, and how we can best protect it. We're with science and environmental journalist Marissa Ortega-Welch. She hosts the KALW podcast, How Wild. This show was inspired by the podcast, of course, but also listeners like you in our Discord community. Thanks, Kenichi, for suggesting this topic.

We want to hear from you. I mean, what does wilderness mean to or for you? What does it bring to your life? And how do you, what's a place that makes you feel like you're in the wilderness? You can give us a call. The number is 866-733-7333.

866-8786. Maybe for you, that's the Oakland Hills. Maybe for you, that's my backyard last night where there was a raccoon fight. That was pretty wild. Maybe you must go much farther to get that feeling. The number is 866-733-6786. On all the social things, including the Discord, we're KQED Forum, and the email is forum at kqed.org.

Let's bring in another guest, one of the featured voices on How Wild. Phoebe Young is a historian and professor of environmental history at CU Boulder. Welcome. Thank you. Great to be here. So your work is focused on, at least in part, where the idea of sort of quote unquote pristine wilderness came from. Tell us a little bit about that. So.

There's a long history to this, which goes back to, at least in the European context, to wilderness being a place that is uncontrolled, right? That people can't dominate, right, through agriculture or other means.

And so the positive version of that came to be pristine, kind of untouched by humans. And as Europeans came to settle in North America, the more area that they began to dominate through agriculture and kind of get control of, the more scarce those spaces that were

kind of uncontrolled seemed, right? And so over time in the 20th century, that came to be prized, right, as these kind of pristine, untouched places that ought to be preserved. And in a way, it was a kind of flip

of the script from how it had been in, say, the 18th century and before. Where wilderness was terrifying and something to stay away from. Which, you know, I can understand that perspective as well. Over time, let's call it, you know, the 20th century. How did the American sense of wilderness and I guess what I want to use the correct term, primitive recreation, where did that come from?

So this has to do a lot with how Americans were spending their leisure time on these open spaces that and I forgot one key ingredient is that that as the Europeans are sort of moving into these spaces and dominating them, they're also unpeopling.

essentially removing communities where this land had in fact been managed by indigenous people for centuries, right? So they saw them as pristine and untouched, but they were kind of missing a whole lot of what had come before. So these places got unpeopled and kind of uncontrolled over time. Americans come, white Americans come in to recreate in these spaces and

And pretty quickly, they began to use modern apparatus to do so, right? Railroads, cars, and began to sort of overrun and overcrowd these spaces even as early as the 1920s. So some of the same conversations we hear today happened a century ago. And one way to settle them was just to provide an extra set of protections, although it didn't actually take effect until the 1960s, yeah? Yeah.

Right. Well, so, I mean, there are protections from the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but those didn't necessarily prevent all kinds of development. And so the Wilderness Act is the most strict level of protection to prevent even those developments for recreationists.

Right. So roads, lodges, loop campgrounds, those kinds of things are written out of these particular spaces to keep them sort of yet more, quote unquote, pristine, harmonious.

We're talking about wilderness. We are joined by science and environmental journalist Marissa Ortega-Welch, who hosts the KLW podcast, How Wild. You just heard from Phoebe Young, historian and professor of environmental history at CU Boulder. And after the break, we're going to get to some of your thoughts on wilderness, how it makes you feel, places that make you feel that sense of quote-unquote wilderness. The number is 866-733-6786.

The email is forum at kqed.org. We'll be back with more right after the break.

Turing with Tia is the quirky YouTube talk show where Tia Creighton is the host and all her guests are talking AI chatbots. Whether it's health and beauty, science and technology, pop culture, or current events, Turing with Tia delivers answers about everything. That's T-U-R-I-N-G, Turing with Tia, a funny and fascinating way to experience artificial intelligence. Only on YouTube at Turing with Tia.

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Welcome back to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We're talking about wilderness, what it means to us, how we like to experience it, the lines we draw around it. And we're joined by Phoebe Young, a historian and professor of environmental history at CU Boulder. Also joined by science and environmental journalist Marissa Ortega-Welch, who hosts the KALW podcast, How Wild. Want to

I want to add in another guest. Aparna Rajagopal is a former outdoor educator and founding partner of the Avarna Group, which works with outdoor and environmental leaders on DEI initiatives. Welcome, Aparna. Thanks for having me on the show. So talk to me a little bit about how you encountered this idea of wilderness and how you felt like you fit or didn't fit into its kind of cultural restrictions or norms.

Yeah, so I got to tell you, Alexis, I kind of drank the Kool-Aid about what wilderness was about. So, you know, back in the 80s, my family had immigrated back to the United States and we

One of the ways that my family, and I'm Indian, of Indian origin, one of the ways that they thought, you know, this is how you become American is to go camping. And so we would pour over maps and find the nearest national park that had a group campsite that could accommodate my entire family, which included like a gaggle of grandmothers.

We would rent RVs and we would head out to the nearest national park and including Sequoia National Park was one of the earliest parks that we camped at.

And I would, you know, for me, that experience was so transformative. And I believed, like, you know, never mind that there were people all around me, like even in Yosemite, I truly believed that these places were, quote unquote, pristine and untouched. And so like some of those experiences I had as a kid,

I'm proud of, but I also have a lot of shame because I've had to do a lot of unlearning since then around the history of these places that I love so much. So for me, connecting to these places that are wilderness was sort of inextricable from connecting with community because I was always with my family. And for me, when I'm in awe, I see a beautiful mountain or a flower, I want to share that with someone.

I don't want to be alone. And that's that's always been my connection. That's so interesting. And Phoebe, let's talk a little bit about how that might be a distinction from, you know, the way that people think about, you know, solitude in these landscapes, a la, you know, you're kind of John Muir.

Absolutely. I mean, it's a complicated history, but I think John Muir plays a big part in creating a kind of cultural expectation of kind of what you're supposed to do in nature and particularly in wilderness.

that this sort of the prized attitude is one of kind of solid, you know, contemplation, quiet, solitude. And that's come to be seen. In fact, it's written into the Wilderness Act itself as a place for solitude, that that becomes kind of the assumed norm. But of course, there are many different ways to be in nature. And that was kind of the one that rose up through his popular writings.

in the early part of the 20th century and kind of extolling of the natural, again, seemingly untouched beauty of the Sierra Nevada. And of course, you know, not only is the land, you know, been touched and actively managed by indigenous people, but there've been lots of things that have happened, at least in some of these areas. Alex in San Jose wants to talk about some of that. Welcome to the show.

Hello. Hey, Alex. Welcome. Go ahead. Hey, I've done a lot of backpacking in the immigrant wilderness and out there. There are a lot of dams that were built. I think they were built during the first New Deal, you know, a way to help California's water supply situations. And basically, you

Over the years, a lot of that stuff has gone into disrepair for whatever reasons people have chosen not to maintain them. I just wonder, you guys were talking about untrammeled and the definition of wilderness. And going out there, it's still very wild and very wild. Yeah, but...

But to see these structures, and it's also like, is it makes sense to maintain these things that we've already put the manpower and effort to build? Or is it okay to just let them fall into disrepair at this point? Yeah, such an interesting question. Let's take this one to you, Marissa.

I know the dams that you're talking about. Thanks for bringing that up. I don't know the specific history of them, of how they were built and what exactly they're used for now. But it's a really interesting question. I know that the Wilderness Act has actually been used to remove some dams. I used to live in Washington State and there were dams on a river there that were recently removed. And part of the argument was that it was changing the ecosystem of the wilderness upriver.

So the Wilderness Act can be used as a tool to remove those dams. But yeah, the question of how much impact you'd have in removing them on the wilderness is an interesting one. And like what level of feral does something have to be before it's wild? And I want to say too that one thing I learned looking into this is that this idea of untrammeled is really a forward-looking word. It's about how we treat the land going forward, that we're trying not to restrain it or manipulate it. The Wilderness Act doesn't actually talk about whether or not the land is

could have been disturbed beforehand. And we're also using this word pristine, which I think Phoebe and a partner are saying is really part of the dominant narrative of wilderness. But the word pristine is not in the Wilderness Act. These lands don't have to be pristine in order to get protected. It's about how we treat them going forward, which I think actually opens up a really interesting opportunity to think about embracing some of this history and

You know, and embracing the fact that these lands, as Phoebe and a partner are saying, were actually managed. Yeah. Yeah. You know, let's talk a little bit about the management. You know, one of our listeners, Michael, tweets to say, you know, something a co-worker told me, she took time off every summer to be a seasonal worker in a wilderness area, was that power equipment was not allowed in at least some wilderness areas. So cutting trees down would require a two-person cross-cut saw. How practical is that? Is that true?

It is sort of true. The Wilderness Act is open to interpretation, but it says you have to use the minimum tool for the job. And so some land agencies like the Forest Service have interpreted that to mean no chainsaws because you can cut a tree with a crosscut saw. So yes, in most national forests, under most circumstances, they're still using crosscut saws. But for a helicopter, for example, is deemed to be the minimum tool necessary to, say, rescue someone's life in an emergency.

Yeah, whether or not that's practical, I don't know. And it brings up lots of questions I've heard from scientists who have said that would actually be really helpful for research to use drones. You're not allowed to take off or land a drone in wilderness. So these sort of practical questions as new technology makes old technology less practical are really interesting under wilderness. Yeah, yeah.

We're talking about wilderness, what it means to us, how we like to experience it, you know, how we can think about it, really. And we'd love to hear from you. I mean, what does wilderness mean for you? What's your relationship to it? You know, maybe you don't spend time in the wilderness. What keeps you away from some of these areas where there might be, you know, solitude and primitive recreation? The number is 866-733-6786. And the

Email is forum at kqed.org. Phoebe, let's talk a little bit about the task of federal land managers. I mean, one of the things that's so fascinating to me is that, you know, when we say we're going to protect a wilderness area, like how that ends up becoming operationalized feels really, it feels like there are contradictions built into that concept.

Absolutely. The contradiction is right at the heart in the sense that the assumption is untrammeled, right? You're supposed to remove management practices. But on the other hand, wilderness is also a kind of management regime, right, of a different way of managing a particular kind of landscape.

And to choose a cross that's managed with a cross-cut saw, that's very deliberate. I will say in the 19th century, plenty of forests were decimated by cross-cut saws. It's not as if it's a gentler tool necessarily, maybe a little slower. Yeah.

But in any case, the Wilderness Act, while the assumption is that we're kind of taking management away, it's actually a shift in how these lands are managed and what the debates are around kind of what you can and can't do that is different in even other kind of federally protected public lands like national parks or forests or BLM lands.

So it's a kind of different debate that has evolved over the years and I think is continuing to, as I think Marissa's podcast really illuminates quite well. Yeah. Let's bring in Raleigh in Durango, Colorado. Welcome. Hi. I live directly adjacent to a wilderness area, the Waimanooch Wilderness Area, which has been

Affected by climate change. There's a huge hundreds and hundreds of acres of trees that are dead. Hundreds of acres. Beetle kill out there or something else? Primarily beetle kill, spruce kill. Yep. But it's attributed to climate change. And you've mentioned the lines we draw around wilderness areas. And I just want to make the comment that there's no line.

These are not remote islands. These are part of our ecosystems.

And they're not. We talked about the idea that they're not pristine, and that's for sure. Yeah. But yeah, no, Raleigh, I totally agree. Let me revise the statement to say our attempts to draw lines around the wilderness. Tell me about the ways. Thank you for that point, Raleigh. Marissa, tell me about the ways that those lines that we draw on the map work.

Are are porous. I mean, not just climate change, but, you know, animals moving through. What do we need to do to better support, you know, the the living ecosystems of those areas when, you know, as Raleigh accurately points out, there's all kinds of stuff from the outside that makes its way in.

There's so many things. I mean, yeah, in terms of wildlife, you know, with climate change, more wildlife are going to be on the move. Right. And so they're not going to, you know, they don't already stay put within wilderness areas. They cannot probably read the signs that tell them they're in a wilderness area. And so having land that's connected, you know, what biologists call these wildlife corridors that maybe connect.

one wilderness area to another through something that has a different designation, you know, like a national recreation area or just within the national forest. They need, you know, sort of safe passages between these protected lands.

I mean, you know, another thing that I'm hearing and I've heard about this in the women, which too is, yeah, we've kept fire off of the land and that is having a huge impact. And so thinking about how we can put more fire back on the land in wilderness areas, especially wilderness areas that are frontline communities are next to frontline communities in places like Durango. How do you let a fire there, um,

do the job that it's supposed to do in the forest while also protecting the homes nearby. A lot of times we're just automatically putting out these fires. What are other decisions we can make to bring fire back into the wilderness? Let's bring in Noah in Oakland. Welcome, Noah. Hi, thanks. So my first job...

a wilderness ranger in the Aspen Carbondale area in Colorado in 2014, which was the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act. We're both jealous. And that was for the Forest Service. So we did a lot of education on that act and its history. One really interesting thing is that when the Wilderness Act was passed, the definition of something that was historic or worthy of being preserved was anything that was 50 years old or older, which is a really strange

and like very small uh... you know time a period of time for the u_s_ government that is this decided when it's something it's story right and so uh... i was also a wilderness biologist at the point national park for several years and i did a bunch of invasive species control uh... in the current canyon there

The meadows that we were maintaining, mostly native species, great biodiversity, good for wildlife. We were digging invasive species out of them to maintain these meadows. But those meadows were created by shepherds in the 1800s, driving their livestock up there. So they cleared the forest and now...

In order to maintain wilderness, we're maintaining these – it's good habitat, but it's not really natural per se. It's something that's very much human-manipulated. And so that was just a very interesting kind of contradiction, but also I do think those areas are really valuable. I'd definitely do it again. So thanks for taking my call. Yeah, thank you, Noah.

I mean, it is fascinating, I think, Marissa, the way that we keep kind of circling around to. There's no way to get around the fact that humans have made this world. We've created many ecological niches which didn't exist before, but now do. So now what do we do with them? You know, I mean...

I think one thing we haven't mentioned is just the other living creatures that are in these spaces. How does the Wilderness Act kind of address itself to ecology, given that it was passed in 1964 when the whole idea of an ecosystem was just starting to come around?

Yeah. So as Phoebe was saying, the Wilderness Act was really developed around mostly a concern about cars, right, and roads and developments. It was not really – I think it definitely – or as early as the teens and 20s, you would see that they were writing about, okay, this could help the environment in some sort of vague way. But it was really about not developing these places and that, again, if you just kind of set them aside from development, they would be fine. Yeah.

And so as we sort of developed and refined our ideas around what ecology is, it's not fully talked about in the Wilderness Act. It's something that land managers are now, as they think about managing these ecosystems, having to think about that under the Wilderness Act itself. And it's tricky. I mean, even something like putting a radio collar around a bear to track it in Yosemite, that that device itself could be seen as going against the Wilderness Act. Yeah.

Phoebe, how have you traced some of that history?

So I looked at the history of camping as a lens on some of this. And this means camping not just in the wilderness, but in many other spaces. And of course, camping began as a functional act. It's what you did when you were traveling between places. But that, as Marissa was saying, I mean, by the 1920s, camping was a very popular kind of new recreation with people driving their Model Ts into national parks and kind of camping willy-nilly all over the place.

There were no sort of dedicated campgrounds or campsites. And so land managers noticed that campers were

kind of damaging things, particularly in Sequoia. It was one of the first places where this problem was kind of understood about, you know, campers nailing their tents to the roots of sequoias. And out of that, we get the loop campground, which kind of disperses and concentrates campers' impact in very particular places and away from sensitive material. And that was a big success in a lot of ways to protect these kind of spectacular spaces

But it also became a kind of infinitely reproducible blueprint so that, you know, every campground you've ever been in practically, right, not in the wilderness, but in the front. Suburban wilderness. Yeah. Exactly. Is on that. And so then we actually see an even larger explosion of campers in these spaces looking for experiences outdoors, but also, I think, in many ways for social connection and in the ways that a partner was talking about.

So interesting. You know, there is a comment here that I'm going to kind of lay out for us and then maybe we'll we'll pick it up after the break. But Margaret writes, I think that people who love nature should just stay out of it and leave it alone. It does not need us.

Marissa, we can't get as deep into this as maybe we might want to, but I am really curious about what you think about the idea that at this point in particular, nature doesn't need us. And maybe did nature, has nature, have we always been a part of nature, I think is one of the points of your, or one of the questions of the podcast. Yeah.

Right. I think there is a lot of value to what Margaret is saying. And it also immediately sets up this dichotomy that we are not nature. Right. And it erases then the history of people on the land working with nature. Yeah.

There's a lot more to say about that. Yeah. But I also think there's a lot of validity. I understand where that comment comes from. I mean, you know. I mean, look around. We've messed up so many things, so many natural systems. We haven't done a great job. But I guess I would like to believe that we could learn to be better stewards in connection with the nature that's within us and that is all around us. Yeah.

We're talking about wilderness, what it means to us, how we define it, what it feels like. We're joined by science and environmental journalist Marissa Ortega Welch, who created... Created, yeah? Yeah. The KLW podcast, How Wild. How Wild.

Also joined by Aparna Rajagopal, who is a former outdoor educator and founding partner of the Avarna Group, which works with outdoor and environmental leaders on DEI initiatives. Also joined by Phoebe Young, a historian and professor of environmental history at CU Boulder.

We're, of course, also taking your calls about what wilderness does for you, what it means to you. Maybe you don't spend time in the wilderness. What's keeping you away? The number is 866-733-6786. We're KQED Forum on all the social things. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned.

Turing with Tia is the quirky YouTube talk show where Tia Creighton is the host and all her guests are talking AI chatbots. Whether it's health and beauty, science and technology, pop culture, or current events, Turing with Tia delivers answers about everything.

That's T-U-R-I-N-G, Turing with Tia, a funny and fascinating way to experience artificial intelligence. Only on YouTube at Turing with Tia. Support for KQED Podcasts comes from Star One Credit Union, now offering real-time money movement with instant pay. Make transfers and payments instantly between financial institutions, online or through Star One's mobile app. Star One Credit Union, in your best interest.

Welcome back to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. We're talking about wilderness, joined by Marissa Ortega-Welch, host of the KLW podcast How Wild, Aparna Rajagopal, who is a former outdoor educator, founding partner of the Avarna Group, and CU Boulder environmental historian Phoebe Young. Let's bring in George in San Jose. Welcome, George.

Hi. I just wanted to share a comment about the pandemic and the post-pandemic society that's emerged that really changed the way I look at wilderness. So during the pandemic, we had not that many places to go that were outdoors. And of course, like many others, I did go to national parks and wilderness areas. But after the pandemic, with a hybrid pandemic,

culture, society, workplace environment that's emerged, I find myself not wanting to get into places that are isolated. In fact, I find myself gravitating towards city events, urban events, places where there are lots of people because I don't like the isolation. That's all.

Yeah, that's really interesting. Thanks for that comment, George. Aparna, I wanted to ask you about some of the other reasons that people may not go into these wilderness areas. And in particular, I think I want to start with accessibility concerns. There's a great story in the podcast about

A wheelchair using person who uses sort of like a hand cycle to to move around. But of course, there's problems on certain trails and stairs and other kinds of things. What when you go to talk to wilderness groups or talk with people about, you know, how do we make the outdoors more accessible to all kinds of people and bodies? Like what do you say?

Yeah, I think I often say that, you know, a lot of these groups are like, well, you know, the wilderness is there. And so people should come enjoy it. It's really, really, you know, good to be outdoors. It's really good for your health. And I think there are a couple of different assumptions there. And then in addition, there are a lot of barriers to even accessing these places.

I do want to say, and I know your question was about access, but I do want to say that there is this assumption that wilderness is categorically benevolent and wilderness has not always been a safe place for a lot of communities in the U S and, and so, you know, um,

you know, for black communities. And Carolyn Finney writes about this in a book, Black Faces, White Spaces, that for a lot of African-American and black communities, the wilderness was a place where not long ago there were lynchings. And so there's that assumption, right? And then let's say we can sort of surmount that. And for me, I do love wilderness. But to get there, there are so many barriers. We're thinking about logistical barriers like transportation. We're thinking about access

Access to permitting, so the permitting systems have changed pretty drastically since the pandemic. There's been this narrative that we are, quote unquote, loving our parks to death, and therefore there are all these permits.

These new permit regimes where we need to be online at the wee hours of the morning to purchase a permit to go into a wilderness area. So there's the privilege of having internet, of being able to pay for the permits, of being able to log in and get a permit. And then you're stuck with having to go at a certain timeframe that you have to have, again, the privilege to be able to spend that time to go there.

So there are all those barriers. And then once you get to these places, the additional barriers, you know, I often hear, well, nature doesn't care about your skin color. You know, nature is welcoming. The reality is that is that you're always interacting with other people in these places. And and there are always barriers to feeling a sense of belonging. So when I was an outdoor educator and took a group.

of kids that were mostly kids of color into remote wilderness in the Wind River Range in Wyoming.

there were visitors who came up to us and assumed that these kids were from an incarcerated youth program. - Ooh! - And can you imagine the feeling that these kids who were academically excelling, and they were actually, they received scholarships for this program because they were college-bound, academically excelling students, and then being put into a box because they were all kids of color in a particular place.

So, you know, when I talk about access, I'm talking about everything. I'm not just talking about permits and parking. I'm talking about whether these places are places where you can feel a sense of belonging. So, yeah. Yeah. It's...

It makes a lot of sense in American society that something like that would happen. And it's also just so tragic, right? Because it is it does it is something that people want to feel neutral and good and a place to find, you know, a sense of freedom and solitude. But as you're noting, these histories kind of preclude that from happening equally.

I do want to talk about what solitude in nature or the feeling of nature can do for people on the positive side, in addition to these complexities of the concept. So let's bring in Renee in Santa Rosa. Hey, Renee. Yes. I wanted to share what you just said. I felt like my experiences as a child were...

in wildlife and in places where your wilderness is, was such a gift and how I've used it through the rest of my life. I had a lovely aunt and uncle that gave me experiences I wouldn't have otherwise had, actually, in the Pecos wilderness, and we pack in with horses. And the experience...

There were times when I would be there and go, maybe, just maybe, someone has never touched the ground that I am touching at this moment. And I have used it so many times during stressful incidences to reground myself, to have those memories and the feelings of the preciousness back.

And a gift it was to have those quiet, beautiful experiences where there's no traffic, there's no people, and just feeling so special to have that opportunity. Yeah.

Yeah, I feel that. And I've used it my whole life. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what an amazing gift from the landscape. You know, I think I just add to your list that sense of interconnectedness that we can sometimes feel out there of just all these different natural systems kind of working in concert. You know, Christopher also wants to chime in. You know, part of what it means to be human is to be wild. Getting deep into the wilderness to places that may take several days walking to reach is a way of reaching deep into ourselves. Yeah.

It requires a level of effort and self-reliance that's not asked of us in our urban lives. I'm a scoutmaster, and when I take a group of scouts on a 50-mile trek in the Sierra, you see how it changes the way they relate to each other and themselves. There's wilderness in all of us.

So let's, for a moment at least, table the complexities of what wilderness is, because there are some folks who I think are interested in just like, how do I even understand if this is something for me? Jill writes in to say, with a very helpful tip, the Pleasanton Library loans out a backpack with supplies, compass, et cetera, to experience the great outdoors. And Karen asks, in regard to the question of what keeps you from going into the wilderness, I'd

I didn't grow up camping or anywhere near national or state parks. Now that I'm a parent, I want to induce my kids to the wilderness and camping and preservation, but I have no idea how to get started and not sure I have the money to spend on equipment. Any advice on how to get started, especially with toddlers? Marissa, let's start with you. Oh my gosh, what a good question. I'm racking my brain for resources on where you would get started if you don't have the gear.

Or just like, you know, where would one start even reading? Like, let's just imagine the gear is, you know, you borrow it from Nate. I mean, that's what we do, you know. So one of the things I talk about in the podcast is how technology changes our experience of wilderness. And I think there are ways that the Internet has made wilderness so much more accessible. So there are so many resources and I can follow up if there's ways to follow up with this listener about specific websites. But you can research things online. I know just off the top of my head, the Yosemite Conservancy.

It offers guided trips in wilderness. You do have to bring your own gear, but it's a relatively affordable way if you want a guide. So I would suggest looking for friends of groups. There's a lot of friends of different wilderness areas or national parks that may have some guided trips.

and maybe they would rent out some resources. And yeah, looking at, you know, knowing that the Pleasanton Library has a backpack to borrow, that is so awesome. Thank you for that tip. I would even just Google, yeah, Bay Area Backpacking Gear Library. There's an organization called the Bay Area Wilderness Training Group that

They mostly train educators on how to take young people backpacking. But actually, if you just reach out to them, if the caller wants to reach out to Bay Area Wilderness Training, they may be able to point you in some good directions. There's also some other great guided stuff like the Herbarium's Herbaria at UC Berkeley. They do trips if you're interested in botanical things.

I also want to know, and I'll just bring you back to the last episode of your podcast, which is Point Reyes wilderness is right here. How does Point Reyes sort of embody the kind of ease of access that we might have been just talking about, but also some of the complexities of what it is to have a wilderness that's also filled with cows and stuff? Or close to filled with cows? I'm not going to get into the cow debate. Okay.

I think we're really lucky to have a wilderness so close to us. We have an official wilderness here in the Bay Area, the Phillip Burton Wilderness. And what's fascinating about that wilderness, if you look at it on a map, it is a very weird outline because there's wilderness areas. The campsites are outside of wilderness. So you start at the trailhead at the road, you enter into wilderness, you hike a couple miles, and then you leave the wilderness to be at a campground with pit toilets and

I think they have picnic tables and campfire rings, and definitely they have boxes to put your food in to keep it safe from the raccoons. So it's a super accessible wilderness, great place to take kids. I think the shortest trip to a campsite is two miles. You may even be able to get closer. So that would be a great place to start. It's a fascinating wilderness to me because I go there, and like I said, I'm kind of a snob, and I think...

This doesn't feel like wilderness. There's a pit toilet. But how amazing that we have this place that's near us that's so accessible. So, yeah, there's a lot to be said there. I mean, I think the other challenge is that, you know, there is ranching nearby. And so, you know, wilderness has to take that into consideration. Yeah.

There are also these herds of tule elk and there is a current debate about how to manage the tule elk in wilderness. So there's a lot of interesting complexities going on at Point Reyes. Yeah. But so accessible, so interesting, so beautiful. It feels like a particularly mentioned toddlers. That seems like a great place to get started with toddlers.

You know, Phoebe, one of the things that I've been dying to ask you since I heard you on the podcast is just how after learning all this history, you know, the kind of erasure of indigenous perspectives, the way that this has sort of been culturally constructed, what has it done to your internal feelings when you go out?

assuming you do, into these spaces and kind of experience the thing that the Wilderness Act was designed to give you, which is to say, you know, solitude, freedom, primitive recreation.

Yeah, I'll say it's a lot of cognitive dissonance. But and I will say, first of all, I'm much more of a front country type person. You know, Point Reyes is my wilderness speed. I'm I'm I'm decently afraid of bears and mountain lions and things like that. But but I do. I mean, look, I live in Boulder, Colorado. The wilderness light is right outside my door. And yeah.

Absolutely. I think, you know, I still do feel like I get the benefit from it, but I'm just personally and also having grown up with it, like some of the callers have mentioned, I think that's a huge way that people get into this is through family connections and as a child and for communities that don't have that, right, that it doesn't, it's not self-perpetuating. And, and

But when I'm there, I also just have more of a recognition of kind of, I think, as you said, like all of the things that created this space and made it accessible to me, both physically and culturally, that I'm just kind of aware of all of this. And so in some ways, it enhances my appreciation, just kind of understanding the history and context and desire to share with people how to think about these spaces and that it isn't always simple. And it's not necessarily biologically universal that

This is something that is kind of culturally constructed and that we can reconstruct into different ways. We can tell different stories about what nature means and who belongs there. Aparna, maybe I'll take this one to you. Kind of the same question for you, but like the little spin on it, I guess I would put is it sounds to me like you actually found something very valuable in these spaces and

And I don't know. I mean, is it is there a point at which we're so like so critical of the way that we've done this management that we stop being able to appreciate the thing that being out in these like better functioning and living ecosystems than, you know, my backyard that that we lose something by being so kind of dialed into the creation in, you know, bad circumstances of some of these places?

Well, I think it's a both and. I think that we can be in these places and experience the wonder, the awe, everything that the narrative has told us and me and everything I've bought into loving these places and still be reflective and critical and

You know, for example, you know, when I when I've been leading leading trips on the Wind River Indian Reservation, which is not in the wilderness side, you know, if we see a barbecue grill that's out 10 miles into the wilderness, not not suddenly getting judgmental about it and saying, oh, OK, this is this is a particular cultural connection to land and it's valid. So just honoring all the different ways people connect to wilderness is

And, and, and so, you know, for some people, it's not about the John Muir style of doing things, you know, and for me, I'm never alone. I'm in conversation with even if I am alone, I'm in conversation with the plants and the animals. It feels like I'm with community all the time. Yeah, I love that.

You know, I also want to say, Marissa, the history gets us somewhere. And where it gets us right is to these wilderness areas beginning to partner with indigenous communities that had long been stewards of at least some of these spaces, right? Yes, exactly. I think that's one of the most important parts of history that we have to reckon with, right? That all of public lands were indigenous homelands that were taken from tribes. The tribes are still here.

And they've been dispossessed of their land. And so there is a growing movement among the U.S. and among these land agencies to recognize that history. And there's sort of a spectrum of responses from, you know, consulting with tribes to engaging in what are called co-stewardship agreements to land back, right, returning the land to the tribes.

And so here in Point Reyes, we have one of those co-stewardship agreements. The National Park Service has partnered with the Federated Indians of Great and Rancheria. The tribe there represents the Coast Miwok, whose ancestral territory includes Point Reyes, and the Southern Pomo. And so the tribe is now at the table with the park in making decisions about wilderness and the national park themselves. These aren't always 50-50 power shares, right?

Right. Coast, you know, to steward is a pretty vague term that can depend on the agency and the agreement. But it's a really interesting example of something to do going forward in terms of co-managing these places and returning some of that management to the tribes that have been managing them for managing these lands for millennia. Yeah.

Last couple comments from listeners here. Callers, Mike and Carl, who we're not going to have time to get to, have some really useful tips that they called in with. So one is to check with your local park district, like East Bay Parks, about family camps that can set up camping trips and have gear lending programs. Also may probably have some cultural resources in the East Bay Park District as well. The other is to request items on buy nothing groups because people are sometimes giving away hiking equipment

boots, tents, backpacks, and used gear. Final thought

comment. Nick writes in to say, as a lover of Bay Area parkland, like Point Reyes National Seashore, I struggle with what one environmental historian called the paradox of preservation, where traditional uses of land, like oyster aquaculture, have to be erased to create, quote, wilderness for the privileged few who then get to recreate in those spaces. And, you know, just was thinking about the difficulty of balancing historical uses of the land with our desire to be in nature. If you want much more on

on that topic, you should listen to KLW's podcast. It's called How Wild. We've had host Marissa Ortega-Welch with us. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. We've also had two key sources from the podcast, Phoebe Young, historian and professor of environmental history at CU Boulder. Thank you so much, Phoebe.

Thanks. This has been a great conversation. And Aparna Rajagopal, who is a former outdoor educator and founding partner of the Avarna Group, which works with outdoor and environmental leaders on DEI initiatives. Thank you, Aparna. Thanks for having me. Yeah. So much fun.

The 9 o'clock hour of Forum is produced by Grace Wan and Blanca Torres. Our interns are Lauren Smith and Brian Vo. Jennifer Ng is our engagement producer. Francesca Fenzi, who also produced this show, is our digital community producer. Judy Campbell is lead producer. Danny Bringer is our engineer. Our vice president of news is Ethan Tovin-Lindsey. And our chief content officer is Holly Kernan. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Stay tuned for another hour of Forum Ahead with Mina Kim.

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