It has depth and permanence and an intricate balance that will outlive memory. The gift my parents tried to give us through forced marches, the wilderness treks, the camping trips, and the teachings is a sense of finding solace in nature that extends beyond its physical presence. Aldo Leopold writes that recreational development is a job not of building roads into lovely country, but of building receptivity into the still unlovely human mind. This is an interesting statement, for instead of fostering a need to change the world around us to fit our peculiar needs, it challenges us to turn inward. The fault, to paraphrase Shakespeare, is no longer in the stars, but in ourselves.
Development implies an improvement.
Wild places seem to offer by their very presence of interdependence a slight to the progress of humanity. Our thirst for wealth and advancement has made us unable to accept that we are not gods of the earth. We are uncomfortable with those things we cannot control or understand. This does not only apply to our relationship with nature, but also with each other. Evidenced in the Jim Crow laws of the South, the perseverance of neo-nazi groups, and the decimation of native cultures during settlement, we find ourselves unable to cope with the diversity that, in the end, is the foundation for the stability of the natural world.