In Wilderness and Wildness

Abstract

There are complexity of entities and happenings embodied within the pillars that frame the doorways in our homes and support broad flat spaces that form supermarkets and department stores. Each pillar speaks to the mythology encircling the origins of Gothic architecture; the ideas surrounding the shift from the trunks and boughs of the scared grove towards the columns, arches and vaults of church and cathedral. Each pillar embodies the evolution of life and the history of the earth. Awakening towards the relational agency at play within the 'humanly derived' allows us to recognise this agency as akin to wildness and as William Cronon asserts, this draws us closer to recognising and responding to the wild in all that surrounds us. It also shifts how we understand the concept of wilderness. It is not, as Cronon contends, a cultural construct, but a fluxing and complex gestalt that includes both human and more than human agency.