Primal Hypotheses: The Relationship Between Naturalness, Solitude, and the Wilderness Experience Benefits of Development of Self, Development of Community, and Spiritual Development

This paper describes what we call hypoth- eses, which assert positive relationships between the legislated wilderness attributes of naturalness and solitude and three broad constructs that embrace human benefits from wilderness experience reported in the literature—development of (DOS), develop- ment of (DOC) and (SD). These hypotheses support the notion that managing wilderness for natural- ness and solitude will generate wilderness experience benefits for people, in addition to meeting a legal mandate for wilderness protec- tion. We find the hypotheses generally supported by studies reported in the literature on wilderness experience and by a limited test using data from three wilderness experience programs. This paper describes what we call the hypotheses, which assert positive relationships between the legislated wilderness attributes of naturalness and solitude and three broad constructs that embrace human benefits from wilder- ness experience reported in the literature—development of (DOS), of (DOC) and spiri- tual (SD). We use the term hypotheses in a limited sense to suggest relationships between naturalness, solitude and the DOS, DOC and SD constructs, much like a forester would assert relationships between certain silvicul- tural treatments and certain forest conditions. That is, the hypotheses are to be considered working assump- tions, standing true against general evidence, but certainly subject to further testing and confirmation. These hypoth- eses support the notion that managing wilderness for natu- ralness and solitude will generate wilderness experience benefits for people, in addition to meeting a legal mandate for wilderness protection. The hypotheses are rel- evant to the issue of whether to manage wilderness under a biocentric philosophy privileging naturalness or an anthro- pocentric philosophy adapting nature to human convenience and preference (Hendee and others 1990). We find the hypotheses generally supported by virtually all studies reported in the literature on wilderness experience and by our limited test using data from three wilderness experience programs with different populations. Wilderness is appropriately understood as a human con- struction, a state of mind (Nash 1982). Individual percep- tions of wilderness vary, as do the environments described as wilderness. However, a relatively high degree of natural- ness and opportunities for solitude have been identified as two defining qualities of wilderness by the Wilderness Act of 1964. These attributes are embraced in wilderness manage- ment direction in federal agency manuals and synthesized into instructional textbook material on the subject (Hendee and others 1990). We refer to the attributes of naturalness and solitude as primal because they represent essential conditions that wilderness protection seeks to preserve. Wilderness provides myriad general benefits to individu- als, society and nonhuman organisms (Driver and others 1987b; Nelson 1998), but our focus here is on benefits that arise from direct, personal experience of wilderness. Driver (1996) has defined a recreational benefit as an improved condition, prevention of an undesirable condition or attain- ment of a desired condition. In this paper, we consider wilderness experience benefits as improved human condi- tions in the categories of development of self (DOS)—mean- ing personal benefits; development of community (DOC)— meaning interpersonal and group benefits; and spiritual development (SD)—meaning a profound sense of connection to nature, the larger universe or transcendent Other.