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Preserving the Wilderness Idea
Calling the idea of wilderness into question makes as much sense as asking whether the United States is a democracy.
Tompkins’s vision was informed by his readings in the philosophy of Deep Ecology, a philosophical and spiritual movement that claims moral and legal rights for the natural world,as well as by the American experience of wilderness preservation, including the creation of the National Park System. Advertisers use it to sell products ranging from puffy jackets and hiking boots to home decor and SUVs, the vast majority of which will never leave the pavement of the heavily developed urban landscape. 3 3 x Matthew Patrick Rowley, “How Plague Reshaped Colonial New England Before the Mayflower Even Arrived,” The Conversation, November 13, 2020, https://theconversation.com/how-plague-reshaped-colonial-new-england-before-the-mayflower-even-arrived-137570.Given that many of these cultures did not leave large-scale, durable monuments or artifacts, colonists spreading across North America found many places that appeared and felt “empty” to them—places that scarcely a generation earlier would have contained a notable human presence.
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