threat to wildness that I know of
Of all the intrusions in wild country, nothing annoys me as much as residential development. Mining, logging (especially clearcuts), and power lines are annoying, too, but at least there’s a plausible argument that they’re necessary. Farming is another intrusion: “a sustained catastrophe,” in the words of Richard Manning, “the practice of plowing, then preventing nature from healing itself” [Manning 1995: 155]. But, along with the rest of the culture, I forgive farmers and believe that farmland is beautiful. The houses of miners, loggers, and farmers are also acceptable in the countryside because their occupants deserve to live where they work. But most of the new houses sprawling across the landscape are occupied by people who could easily live elsewhere. They’re either retired or in footloose occupations, or they commute great distances to work.
In Arizona, we saw the cancer of residential development devour the desert; in Florida, it destroyed sand scrub and tropical hardwoods; in California, it consumed chaparral. And it wasn’t just in those places and around the fringes of other metropolitan areas. It was everywhere. The slopes of the Manzano Mountains in New Mexico were already marred by a scattering of houses, and Tierra Grande advertised five- to forty-acre homesites. At Bella Vista, Arkansas, what had probably been a lovely valley was now a seemingly endless golf course. The High Plains Heritage Center, on the outskirts of Spearfish, South Dakota, had a commanding view of what had once been a dramatic Great Plains landscape but was now demeaned by sprawling development. Around artificial lakes in the Ozarks and the Texas Hill Country, new homes were as thick as mosquitoes. A glorious fifty-mile drive through nothing but desert and mountains to Delta, Utah, culminated with a billboard advertising “Golf Course Lots for Sale.” At Homestead National Monument in Nebraska, the surrounding landscape might have looked exactly as Willa Cather had described it—“nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made” [quoted at Homestead National Monument]—except that a subdivision was now visible, sprawling over the prairies out of Beatrice.
Houses would be easier to accept if I believed that the people who lived in them were blissfully happy. As I see it, they might have beautiful country nearby and views of it from their living rooms, but nothing else is convenient. Shopping, school, church, and practically anything else they need or want requires a trip by car; and they can't see the beautiful country around them without also seeing a bunch of other houses. I looked at new houses in the desert of North Scottsdale— “Priced from the 600s,” said the signs—and tried to imagine coveting one of them, and I couldn’t do it. You’d be miles from stores, restaurants, libraries, schools, and theaters, but you’d have neighbors only a stone’s throw away. The worst of both worlds. No conveniences and no solitude either.
What really burns me up is the way residential development feeds off the wildness it destroys. Consider the names of developments. The Parks. The Preserve. (What exactly are they preserving?) The Villas at Anasazi Ridge. Sedona Ridge. Paradise Canyon. The Boulders. Eagle Ridge. River Hills. Painted Desert. Wild Hawk Ridge. Wilderness Estates. Wupatki Trails. Sacred Peaks (“10-Acre Ranches for Sale”). Laurie and I had a joke-that-wasn’t-a-joke that developments are named for whatever has been bulldozed away in order to build them. Near Corkscrew Swamp in Florida, we passed Cypress Woods where there used to be cypress trees, Quail Creek where there used to be quail, and Hunter’s Ridge where people used to hunt. Then there were fields with “Land for Sale” signs and cattle grazing. In a year or two, you'd be able to buy a home at Cattle Ridge. Developments south of Mesa were called Riggs Ranch and Allen Ranch. We laughed bitterly at the thought that it will be good to have names like those in future. When nothing else is left, the history and natural history of the country will at least be remembered in the names of housing developments, shopping malls, and golf courses. “Daddy, what’s a ranch?”
In the lobby of a lodge near Ennis, Montana, I picked up a brochure with a photograph of Sphinx Mountain and a neighboring peak called the Helmet. (The photos of mountain scenery had caught my eye.) Above the photograph were the words “Sphinx Mountain, Montana,” and, below them, “Elevation 10,876 Ft.” I opened the brochure. Inside was a subdivision plat with 84 house sites and, in big letters, the words “The Unspoiled West.” And, in case there was any doubt what “unspoiled” meant, there were nine photographs in the brochure:
- the mountains on the cover, with snow patches and a few wildflowers
- two photos of river and meadows with mountains in the background
- a picture of three men fishing from a boat on the Madison River
- a pronghorn
- an elk
- a fly fisherman with flaming cottonwoods overhead
- a pack train at a high-mountain lake
- a valley scene with mountains in the background and hay bales stored for the winter
A housing development next to Bulow Creek State Park in Florida had a sign announcing “A Private Gated Neighborhood” and listing the amenities. Three-quarters of the way through a list of items such as water, sewer, sidewalks, beautiful landscaping, and low taxes, was the phrase “State Park as Your Backyard.” Not a mention, of course, that a housing development was now the state park’s backyard. In Arizona, north of Tucson, a development with perhaps the most insulting name of all—Wilderness Estates—made a similar claim: “Bordering Coronado National Forest.” Imagine what “Bordering Wilderness Estates Housing Development” would do for most people’s desire to visit a national forest. The value of the housing development was enhanced by diminishing the value of the national forest.
As I looked at Wilderness Estates, the question of why people would want to live there gnawed at me again. “Bordering the National Forest” was clearly a selling point. But I’ll bet the people who live there spend most of their time working in town, puttering around the house and yard, and driving to stores, school, church, movies, soccer practice, and every place else they need to go. Undoubtedly, some of them make ample use of the national forest, but, for most of them, the mountains are merely a backdrop: something to look at, the same as an art object or a TV program. The limited use that most homeowners make of their surroundings is my principal complaint about private land. Take one of those valleys in the mountains of Wyoming or Idaho and carve it up into five- or ten-acre ranchettes. Most of the owners would make very little use of their land beyond the house and yard, and the few who might make frequent use of it—for hiking, horseback riding, hunting, or whatever—can’t, because it’s all private land and they own only one parcel. As an alternative, cluster the houses in one corner of the valley, and make the rest common land. First of all, the residents would have a valley that was still beautiful to look at instead of one cluttered with houses. After all, that’s probably what attracted them there to begin with: the beauty of the valley. And second, there might still be only a minority who would make use of the common land, but at least it would be usable, unbroken by property lines and “No Trespassing” signs.
I know what developers would say about that. They’d say, “Customers won’t accept cluster housing,” and it’s undoubtedly true that customers will say they don't want it. What they want is their own house and nobody else’s. But that’s rarely an option. Do developers ever tell them that? Do they ever say, “You can’t have that. Other people will also build here. So, what’s your second choice?” (Most likely, the developers simply let them go on dreaming, so as not to jeopardize a sale, and allow them to discover later on that the valley will fill up with houses.) Laurie and I were discussing that very topic one day in Utah, near Canyonlands National Park, and we could picture it perfectly in front of us. A valley sloped away from us, overlooked from all sides by outcroppings of orange and tan sandstone. We could picture the valley either filled with an evenly spaced grid of houses or with an equal number of houses clustered over there, against the cliffs, and all the rest of it—with a view sweeping out toward the La Sal Mountains—left just as it was.
I will never comprehend how people can see a beautiful tract of land, with all its plants and associated wildlife, and think, “This would make a good golf course, or housing development or shopping mall." Not that we don’t need golf courses, housing developments, and shopping malls. But we need wild land, too, and we need it badly enough that it should be second-nature to destroy as little of it as possible—no more than what’s absolutely necessary. I literally can’t imagine how the people who build and buy the houses see the country. They must think it’s beautiful. Otherwise, why would they think of putting a house there? But how can they think the house will do anything but spoil it? Do they actually think the land will be beautiful with the house on it? And, if they do, do they still think so when the house is finished? Or do they simply not give a damn?
The worst thing about houses in a wild place is the way they domesticate it. One day in New Mexico, I found poppies blooming at the foot of the Organ Mountains and tried to photograph them with the mountains’ granite spires soaring in the background. I had trouble, however, finding good compositions that didn’t include a group of new homes at the foot of the mountains. The longer I struggled with my photograph, the angrier I became about the houses. “What’s wrong,” I imagined someone asking me, “with building a house at the foot of the mountains?” My answer was that the houses “de-natured” another landscape—and, in this case, an uncommonly spectacular one. Our culture has become too far removed from nature. Developing a love for it is the first step back. And love, I theorized, begins when people see or experience nature and think—or feel—“Isn’t this beautiful!” But how can anyone find the beauty of nature if they see human impacts everywhere? The Organ Mountains, with their soaring pinnacles, were inspiring. The houses sucked inspiration out of the landscape.
In his biography of the photographer William Henry Jackson, Peter B. Hales notes that, in many of Jackson’s pictures of the nineteenth-century West, a human presence was evident in the form of newly constructed railroads, but the awesomeness of nature remained unthreatened. “In Jackson’s West,” writes Hales, “nature could be passed through, appreciated, even exploited, without concomitant diminishment of the power it represented” [Hales: 58]. I underlined the phrase “diminishment of the power.” That’s exactly what residential development does to wild nature. In a sense, mining, logging, and farming are more powerful forces, conquering nature by taking from it or replacing its plants and animals with others. But I think Hales was talking about the power to influence us. Residential domesticity destroys the power to influence us. Nothing saps the impact of wild country like a house with kids' toys in the yard and a car returning from the grocery store.
Is it just envy that makes me say that? Envy of people who’ve captured the dream of living in a wild place? I don’t think so. The message of the house seems to be that, if people can live there, the country isn’t so wild after all. That technology in the form of cars, TV, and computers has made it too easy to live there and has consequently eliminated the wildness. The house is a rude reminder that the place is under the control of humans: a place of no special significance, where people carry on the everyday routines of their lives. A house is worse than a mine, a clearcut, or a power line, which—assuming that they’re needed at all—need to be in a particular place. It’s also worse than a resort, which accommodates large numbers of people on a temporary basis for presumably special experiences. A house says loud and clear, “The people who live here are doing the same things I’d be doing at home.” It’s another case of “Can Implies Ought”—of the inability or refusal to say, “Yes, we could have a house here, but we won’t.”
SOURCES
Hales, Peter B. William Henry Jackson and the Transformation of the American Landscape. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988.
Manning, Richard. Grassland. New York: Penguin, 1995.
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