The abstract idea of wilderness began long before the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964.

As far back as the Babylonian Empire and Chinese Empire laws were written to protect sacred, unrestricted places in nature not yet deprived of freedom of action or natural expression.

First recorded around 1200 AD, the word wilderness suggested wild or uncultivated forest or desert territories, uninhabited or inhabited only by wild animals, or in other words, a tract of wasteland deemed unsafe for civilized Christians.

The aim of Congress in 1964 was to preserve some of our country’s last remaining wild landscapes. Today it serves as a legal and conceptual foundation – “the gold standard” – for contemporary notions of preserving large untrammeled landscapes and codifying protection for fully functioning terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems.

Once located, named (declared as a noun), and mapped, sovereign land becomes an object, a possession, a thing, property. Herein lies the trap. Once perceived as an object the land’s liberating sovereignty begins to fall into an all-too-common dogmatic straitjacket which features rent-seeking and utilitarian reductionism.

The verb form of “wilderness” is “wilder,” found in older texts, meaning to lead astray, bewilder, or wander aimlessly. I can’t count the number of times have I heard government attorneys say: Grizzly bears don’t occupy these lands in the project area (proposed clearcut units), your honor, they’re just........

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