Essays

(A short version of this essay first appeared in Heartstone, Spring 06)

This weekend I've been reading Jack Turner's 1996 book of essays, The Abstract Wild. It's a collection of studied passionate responses to the loss of the wild earth, from the high reaches of Tibet to his own back yard in Jackson, Wyoming. Turner, a climber and former philosophy professor, accepts that the worldwide destruction of wilderness and biodiversity has "spawned a powerful movement to protect what remains of wildness…" But for Turner, this movement does not go far enough. "We must do more," he argues. "We must examine processes at the heart of modernity that are only vaguely understood, however pernicious their consequences for the wild earth, processes that not only destroy the wild but diminish our experience of the wild."