Every landscape, from city to wilderness, is both cultural and natural

Evidence

This will only happen, however, if we abandon the dualism that sees the tree in the garden as artificial—completely fallen and unnatural—and the tree in the wilderness as natural—completely pristine and wild. Both trees in some ultimate sense are wild; both in a practical sense now depend on our management and care. We are responsible for both, even though we can claim credit for neither. Our challenge is to stop thinking of such things according to set of bipolar moral scales in which the human and the nonhuman, the unnatural and the natural, the fallen and the unfallen, serve as our conceptual map for understanding and valuing the world. … Instead, we need to embrace the full continuum of a natural landscape that is also cultural, in which the city, the suburb, the pastoral, and the wild each has its proper place, which we permit ourselves to celebrate without needlessly denigrating the others. We need to honor the Other within and the Other next door as much as we do the exotic Other that lives far away—a lesson that applies as much to people as it does to (other) natural things. In particular, we need to discover a common middle ground in which all of these things, from the city to the wilderness, can somehow be encompassed in the word “home.” Home, after all, is the place where finally we make our living. — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 82

Categorization

• XREF: This continuum-of-landscape claim and its ‘home’ resolution is the chapter’s keystone, tying into the ethic-for-home-landscape thread the reader is following across the polyad. — connects to: Wilderness is a cultural construction, not an untouched natural sanctuary — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 5; Solving environmental problems requires an ethic for the home landscape, not just remote wilderness — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 67; Honoring wildness requires critical self-consciousness, non-use, and gratitude — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 85 (+5 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The argument that we must dissolve the artificial/natural dualism while remaining responsible for both — honoring wildness we neither made nor need — is a genuinely dense, paradigm-level redefinition worth sitting with.

Related

• Wilderness is a cultural construct, not a place that exists apart from humanity (similarity 0.85)
• Solving environmental problems requires an ethic for the home landscape, not just remote wilderness (similarity 0.85)
• Wilderness is a cultural construction, not an untouched natural sanctuary (similarity 0.85)
• The garden tree is as wild and wondrous as the forest tree (similarity 0.83)
• Wilderness ethics fails whether it stresses continuity or independence alone (similarity 0.82)
• Wilderness appreciation was an elite urban leisure projection, not a rural ideal. (similarity 0.81)
• Wilderness wonder is a cultural state of mind, not a natural fact (similarity 0.80)
• Wilderness is a state of mind defined by wonder, not a fact of nature (similarity 0.80)
• Honoring wildness requires critical self-consciousness, non-use, and gratitude (similarity 0.79)
• Wilderness recreation is a class privilege that devalues rural land-based labor (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Human culture and the natural environment form an interdependent dialectical system. #corroborates (0.90) — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature, 251
• Nature and history are inseparable and mutually qualifying #corroborates (0.85) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 1339