The New Wilderness

by Diane Cook

In the beginning, there were twenty. Officially, these twenty were in the Wilderness State as part of an experiment to see how people interacted with nature, because, with all land now being used for resources—oil, gas, minerals, water, wood, food—or storage—trash, servers, toxic waste—such interactions had become lost to history.

So while a couple of those twenty had gone to the Wilderness for adventure, and a couple for knowledge, most fled there because they believed in some way their lives depended on it.

In the beginning, they acquiesced to finger pricks, cheek swabs, urine samples, blood pressure readings, filled out questionnaires each time they went to Post, to see how they were impacting nature and how nature was impacting them. Their days were data to someone, though they never believed the data could be all that important.

Over time, the guns and tents and sleeping bags were wrecked. So they learned to tan skins, sew with sinew, hunt with handmade bows, sleep comfortably on the ground and in the open.

Eventually, their numbers would dwindle to eleven. It’s not that those losses weren’t difficult. It’s just that loss was now a part of their daily life, as so many new things were.