Myth 13: Idealizing wilderness means not idealizing the environment in which we live
Myth: Idealizing wilderness means not idealizing the environment in which we live (i.e. non-wilderness) (Cronon 1996)
Response: This is a myth that is a remarkable logical fallacy that is presented as a truth. Why should this automatically be true? Perceiving and loving wilderness does not mean you can’t love your local park. Should we idealise either? Possibly not – but we should love both. We should accept the ‘more-than-human’ (Abram date) otherness of both places. Keeping wilderness as the wild end of the natural lands continuum can catalyse the love of the land in general – and that spills over to all areas, such as local parks and urban bushland. Why should love of large natural areas mean one should not value smaller, more impacted areas (Washington 2006)?