While bird watching on White Face the other day, Kianee
asked me my opinion of the road winding through our view. I was confused then,
and I still am now. The purpose it serves, presenting nature in an accessible
way to all sorts of people, is a wonderful one. However, the damage caused
making it so accessible, is devastating and irreparable. As Buell points out,
each strike of an axe is a scar on the land. This is quite apparent from the
top of White Face. He then goes on to discuss “environmental restorationism”, a
form of writing that downplays negative (and often human caused) aspects of a
landscape in order to promote love for nature.
This
reading made me wonder how much Kianee and I were willing to blur the harsh
lines of the freshly paved road in order to appreciate and share the view with
others. We’re we capable and
willing to ignore the obvious damage caused by a road like this one in order to
promote our love for nature? How much raw wilderness is each individual willing
to sacrifice for the chance to turn another into a steward of the mountains and
the Earth? Does it stop with a walking path through the woods? The loss of a
portion of an alpine zone? Are we willing to wind a road up a cliff face to
increase the odds that a few visitors each day will form a relationship with
the park as a whole? Or, in doing so, are we in fact, just creating an excuse
for them not to?
I am so glad you posted about this. It actually bothered me quite a bit that we (meaning the group as a whole) never spoke about this after we left.
ReplyDeleteBefore getting there, Annie warned me of what Whiteface would be like. I honestly didn't know what to expect because what she described to me seemed so taboo. When we were driving up that road, I couldn't help but realize, as you said, how much irreparable damage was caused just to make the road. Annie told me that it made her sad too but she mostly accepted it because it gave people who normally couldn't have access to high peaks access.
My response was, "But did they have to kill everything?" Annie then went on to talk about private land and the little difference the construction at Whiteface has to the construction on private land.
I asked, "Isn't the whole point of this park to preserve the wilderness? Isn't it supposed to be 'forever wild'?"
She responded, "Is wilderness for our enjoyment or is it wilderness for the sake of wilderness?"
This is a question many of us will probably toss around in our heads for the rest of the semester.
Another question: Why does the road up Whiteface seem like a greater offense to the natural world or to wilderness than a road through a valley, of which there are of course hundreds of miles in the Park. There are roads along lakeshores, over wetlands, and through acres and acres of pristine forest. I feel the same thing about the Whiteface road (which was made in the 1930s, in part as a make-work project during the depression), but on the other hand, I'm looking forward to biking and skiing on it!
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