William Cronon: The Trouble with Wilderness

[Skip Breadcrumb Navigation]

Home

Student Resources

Possibilities for Writing

This activity contains 3 questions.

Why does Cronon advocate that we rethink the concept of wilderness? What, for Cronon, is the trouble with the conventional thinking about wilderness? How does Cronon himself define “wilderness,” and how does he distinguish it from “wildness”?

To create paragraphs in your essay response, type at the beginning of the paragraph, and at the end.

Write your own essay about some aspect of the natural world. You may wish to take up one of the issues Cronon considers in his comprehensive discussion of wilderness—the idea of the ecological, for example, or of the environmental or the natural. You may wish to include personal experience, definitions of and distinctions among key terms, as well as quotations from other writers on the subject.

To create paragraphs in your essay response, type at the beginning of the paragraph, and at the end.

Visit a local store that commodifies nature or the environment, or do an Internet search for “nature store” and visit a number of websites to gather information. Drawing upon your Internet and field research, write an essay that explains the idea of nature stores and the image(s) of nature and our human relationship with nature that such companies are selling.

To create paragraphs in your essay response, type at the beginning of the paragraph, and at the end.

The Submit Answers for Grading feature requires scripting to function. Your browser either does not support scripting or you have turned scripting off.

So, the Submit Answers for Grading button below will not work.

The following Submit Answers for Grading button is provided in its place and will clear your answers:
The Clear Answers and Start Over feature requires scripting to function. Your browser either does not support scripting or you have turned scripting off.

So, the Clear Answers and Start Over button below will not work.

The following Clear Answers button is provided in its place and will clear your answers: