Listening to the Land: The Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness as Oral History

Although there have been oral histories made of wilderness activists such as Wallace Stegner, oral history and pristine wilderness are seldom paired. Wilderness, as defined by the 1964 Congressional Act is, "in contrast with those areas where man and his own works dominate the landscape, [wilderness] is hereby recognized as an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." Given this definition, human history is often neglected in wilderness literature. This is especially true of places like the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness, the third largest of such areas in the continental U.S. as well as one of the most remote. Yet, however, "untrammeled" this landscape appears to be, in fact it has a complex human history. Representing this history is best done through the medium of oral narrative since orality holds the ability to preserve a sense of time and place, and sound is the fullest way to transform a real space into an imaginary one. Oral narratives of the Selway-Bitterroot, and by extension many American wildernesses, are vital to understanding the interconnectedness between cultural and natural environments. These narratives get closest to the experiencing body in real time, which is what understanding wilderness requires.