“If the core problem of wilderness is that it distances us too much from the very things it teaches us to value, then the question we must ask is what it can tell us about home, the place where we actually live. How can we take the positive values we associate with wilderness and bring them closer to home?” (87)

I like this passage from Cronon because it contradicts my definition of wilderness. It is thought provoking in the sense that it calls attention to climate change and societies’ impact on the environment. How can we hold wilderness as the gold standard if we can’t live in it?

“In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we a completely lost, or turned round, – for a man need only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost, – do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature.” (186)

I think this quote is mirrors what Cronon was saying. In Thourea’s time, he was living with the Wilderness. However, he believed that the common man could get lost in the wilderness, easily straying off the path and becoming confused by different surroundings.