According to Cranon the term “wilderness” has shifted throughout the years and always need to be seen as human constructions that are shaped through e.g. historical events. Cranon therefore introduces us to the idea that the “wilderness” is a representation of the values we have attributed to nature at a certain period of time in history: “Far from being the one place on earth that stands apart from humanity, it is quite profoundly a human creation-indeed, the creation of very particular human cultures at very particular moments in human history.” (p.7).

More importantly, on the same page, people view “wilderness” as an untouched piece of land that has never been affected by anthropogenic influence when in reality, it is “not a pristine sanctuary where the last remnant of an untouched, endangered, but still transcendent nature can for at least a little while longer be encountered without the contaminating taint of civilization. Instead, it is a product of that civilization, and could hardly be contaminated by the very stuff of which it is made”. Thinking about that a little bit longer, it made me realize that we use this thought as an excuse to separate ourselves from nature, which ultimately leads up to us humans not living/ coexisting with nature. That might also be the reason why humans start to not care about nature anymore. Even though we humans seem to enjoy the beauty of nature and create e.g. natural parks of what we find beautiful, we do not leave nature the way it is. Instead, we humans destroy it every day and find excuses to not coexist with it again, as well as not looking for solutions for environmental problems.