Emily D'Souza-Outside Reading 4: Can wildness be found on a wilderness trail?

 This reading connects with Where is Nature’s Body, but I think it adds to our class and our understanding of wilderness and our place in it. It discusses the difficulty in defining wilderness, and Nash claims that it isnt a specific material object, but “a quality that produces a certain mood or feeling in a given individual…assigned by that person to a specific place.” This relates to our class discussions on perspectives, and it emphasizes the importance of ones own perspective in nature. I like it because it makes it a more personal and individual experience, which is what I think is beneficial in trying to get people to care about and protect the environment. If each individual person had one place or one thing they want to protect, I think it would make for environmental improvement. Another important thing this reading mentions is that you can’t live in the wilderness, because if you do it no longer exists. I think this relates to discussions we’ve had on environmental footprints, and how even minorally altering the wilderness takes away from its charm. Wilderness is more than just a place, but it’s also “an idea, a principle, a state of mind…” It is much more complex than most people think, and I feel like we have spent a lot of time discussing the complexity of the environment and all of its parts.