Wilderness Perception and Use: The Example of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area

A. Wilderness as a ResourceFor centuries North American wilderness was viewed only as land to be developed-cleared and farmed, mined, or logged.The wilderness was a challenge.If the challenge was met, material benefits could be drawn from the former wilderness.Now, however, many people in the United States and Canada see wilderness as a resource in its own right.These people oppose conventional development of the remaining wilderness and argue that such areas have greater utility in their wilderness state.Groups such as the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, and the Quetico Foundation present this argument forcefully and seek to influence resource management in the direction of wilderness preservation.Changing ideas provided the impetus for the re-evaluation of wilderness, and economic conditions made the shift possible.The late 18th and the 19th centuries constituted a period of major reinterpretation of the resources of scenic wildlands.Before that time, Americans seldom wrote of nature or scenery with aesthetic appreciation.1 For example, William Bradford described the New England wilderness as hideous and desolate.2 European ideas, particularly Romanticism and a growing scientific interest in nature, influenced American writers such as Bryant, Emerson, Thoreau, Irving, and Muir, and they along with painters began to portray scenery as an object of beauty.'Besides the new attitude towards the natural scene, the almost complete conquest of the wilderness gave a certain scarcity value to the remnant.4 The status of the frontier movement, as a national epic, encouraged keeping some wilderness as a symbol of the frontier and as a setting for re-experiencing its