ENHS Nature Trails October 2003 Article 2

"What's 'Natural' in Natural History?"
By David Wagner

On the last day of September I hiked into the Three Sisters Wilderness for a dose of solitude. It's a little late in the year for backpacking for most folks. The days are short, the nights cold, and the weather is always chancy. On the plus side, the mosquitoes are gone and the hunter and hiker traffic is at a minimum. To optimize my chances for solitude, I drove four miles up a stony jeep track and then hiked a good seven miles to a secret spot some distance off the trail. I did choose a place at high elevation. If I really wanted to guarantee solitude, I'd have tucked myself in next to a middle elevation, nondescript lake. I opted for a high class spot with a comfy tent site and a glorious view. It proved to be the good choice; I pretty much got what I wanted.

Wilderness solitude is important to me because this is the condition I need to let my spiritual urges free. It is a situation where there is no difference between doing science and doing worship. I am such a cynical agnostic that the only place I allow these thoughts is when I feel free of any sign of human influences. In wilderness solitude I can ignore all beliefs about the divine or the meaning of life and simply enjoy the creation for its own sake. The creation, to me, is synonymous with the natural world. My interaction with it is emotional, visceral, spiritual, and ultimately inarticulate. So I can't write much about it.

But I do have plenty of articulate thoughts during these experiences. Sitting next to the stove making coffee in the morning, I contemplate what I mean when I refer to the natural world. Wouldn't it seem to be the same kind of "natural" as when I talk of Natural History? There is a problem for me because my definition of the natural world would seem to be the aspects of the earth that exist without human intervention. Yet, the University of Oregon Museum of Natural History, just like many other museums, has as its main focus the study of humans through the eyes of the discipline of anthropology. If anthropology is a subdiscipline of Natural History, then I need to modify my notion of "natural." The key to my dilemma, I think, is to recognize that humans are a natural part of the natural world. What makes me uncomfortable about human influences, influences that strike me as unnatural, is based on moral and aesthetic sensibilities that are a part of my personal belief system and not logically definable phenomena. I love the beauty and diversity of nature and am upset when these values are destroyed by motives I dislike. I was raised to believe that greed and wastefulness are wicked urges. People who misuse natural resources are, in my mind, moved by these urges. I cannot help wanting to oppose these kinds of people.

So, even though I am a naturalist who considers that his profession is one of science, my environmentalism comes from a moral sense that is outside science. I won't convince people to conserve nature by scientific reasoning. My environmentalist agenda is going to have to come from seeking out and cheering on people who, in their own personal way, share my morals and aesthetics. It is with these folks I'll share the location of the lake I went to this year.

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