An Alaska Anthology: Interpreting the Past

The End of Wilderness

The End of Wilderness MORGAN SHERWOOD Morgan Sherwood, Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Davis, is one of Alaska's more important historians. His many carefully researched books and articles and his encouragement of new students in the field have advanced the understanding of the subject as has the work of few other scholars. Sherwood grew up in Anchorage and completed his undergraduate and advanced studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught at the University ofCalifornia, Davis, since receiving his doctoral degree for a study published in 7965, Exploration of Alaska, 1865-1900 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press), a pioneering work which is perhaps the single most important book in Alaska studies. He has published numerous journal articles, including "Ardent Spirits: Hooch and the Osprey Affair at Sitka" (Journal of the West, July 1965), and "Science in Russian America" (pacific Northwest Quarterly, January 1967). His Big Game in Alaska: A History of Wildlife and People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981) traces the history of game regulation in Alaska from 1925 to 1945 and argues that Alaskans were slow to recognize the necessity for regulation of the resource. In 1967 Sherwood published the first anthology ofscholarly articles on Alaska history, Alaska and Its History (Seattle: University of Washington Press). The article reprinted here offers the challenging thesis that the Alaska wilderness may be a thing ofthe past. Access to the wilderness having become easy and commonplace, man has become a part of the landscape everywhere. Hikers and pilots lost in the wilds now have their positions located by reconnaissance satellites . It may be that, if wilderness means "wild," the taming reach of man may have gone so far as to render the term wilderness meaningful no longer. This article appeared originally in Environmental Review 9 (Fall 1985): 197-209; it is reprinted here by permission. 433 434 MORGAN SHERWOOD E nvironmental historians should face the problem of wilderness, which is a problem of definition, or the failure to frame our analysis of wilderness precisely. If historians continue to treat wilderness only as an idea, the meaning of which has changed over time, they will have little to contribute to the preservation of natural environments and, reductio ad absurdum, "wilderness" will become a city park or perhaps a suburban lawn.! Historiographically, wilderness will cease to be a place or even an idea and become only a word. Maybe it already has. My thesis may be stated simply: We are in the wilderness about wilderness . The central reason for the confusion is our inability or reluctance to treat technology as a crucial factor. To argue the case, I will assay a number of definitions of wilderness and indicate the failure of these definitions to define what is called wilderness in Alaska (not always officially deSignated wilderness units), given the availability of certain technologies. In the conclusion , I will deal briefly with policy for existing natural environments. But first, if you do not think that the meaning of wilderness has become too vague, your attention is called to the title of a recent television documentary about Alaska, narrated by Lome Green and entitled "New Wilderness," as though our lawmakers can declare an area "wilderness" and make it so, as though wilderness can be "new." The Kachemak Bay Wilderness Lodge, a few miles across the bay from the town of Homer, has been listed as America's best wilderness lodge in Sterling Publications' "America's Best 100"2; apparently, the trail to wilderness lodges is brightly blazed by their own version of the Michelin guidebook. Still another example of confusion over the meaning of wilderness comes from a summer issue of the Homer News.3 An Alaska Wilderness Marathon was planned for the Kenai Peninsula last summer. It would cross fifty miles of the Kenai National Moose Range, through which motorized access was requested to set up a check point. Runners could carry portable rafts, tents, and other modem accoutrements needed to "rough it" outdoors. Michael Hedrick, manager of the refuge, denied a permit, saying, "There have to be places where some species of wildlife have top billing." The organizer of the race was a biologist with the Alaska State Fish and Game Department; he responded: "I deal with environmental issues every day and this just isn't an environmental issue." He said that a dogsled race was held in the Gates of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge last year and argued: Why not a marathon through the Kenai...