Mapping the Geography of Hope

What is the nature of humankind's relationship with the natural world? To what extent can social science shed light on this relationship? What are the most pressing research questions? What limitations present themselves? Drawing from the experi- ences of a 16th century cartographer, Fra Mauro, the author addresses the prospects for successfully mapping the meaning of wilderness in contemporary life. I have been waiting my whole life to give this talk. You see, like John Steinbeck confessed in Travels with Charley (1962), I, too, am in love with Montana. When I was a youngster growing up in Michigan, my parents used to bring me to the edge of the Bob Marshall Wilderness every other summer on vacation and turn me loose. I fished mostly. I waded the streams in blue jeans and tennis shoes, floating grasshoppers over the riffles into the deeper holes, trying to entice a brook or rainbow trout to splash at my offering. When I got thirsty, I dipped my baseball cap into the water at my feet and drank to my heart's content. Later on, when I was a teenager, my dad taught me to fly fish on the South Fork of the Sun River, and I replaced grasshoppers with an imitator called the Crazy Goof that I purchased at Dan Bailey's Fly Shop in Great Falls. I rode trail horses, too, with names like Skeeter and Buster. They were plodders mostly, setting their own pace, delivering me in their own good time to places I wanted to fish—places like Pretty Prairie—and to other places from which I could gaze deeper and deeper into Bob—places like the fire lookout atop Patrol Mountain. As a geography major at The University of Michigan, I returned to the Bob Marshall Wilderness with a friend to backpack into the Chinese Wall. Lo and behold, spring floods and a Forest Service airstrip had changed forever the Bench- mark area where I fished as a boy, and for the first time, I entertained thoughts of dedicating my life to the protection of wilderness. Now, 30 years later, I still count those Montana summers as the happiest days of my life. Viewed retrospectively, they provided not only a wonderful context for my boyhood adventures, they provided fertile ground for stimulating my imagination, for exploration and make-believe, and for dream- ing my future. They also provided, as it turns out, the inspiration for my life's work. Obviously, the Bob Marshall Wilderness had a significant effect on me, and the fact that I am standing here before you today is clear trace evidence of the depth and durability of the meaning of wilderness in my life.