Gavin Blog 2

Filling the still air with a cry eerily human, a band of coyotes begin the night’s hunting party—in search of a weak deer, rodent, or even some insects if business is slow. Their whiny howl and yips stretch through the trees and gullies, reminding us of shared experience and camaraderie—both within a species and an ecosystem. I have to wonder how long they’ve felt our presence on the north side of Half Moon Pass: a few hours? A day?

When did a dog’s howl cease to put goose bumps on our arms and legs? When did we become so far removed from the wild of nature that someone thought to argue we weren’t even a part of the natural world? Nine days in the Big Snowy Mountains presented us with the question: are we a part of or separate from Nature?

In their essay, Social Construction of Nature, Robbins, Hintz and Moore define nature as: everything that exists that is not a product of human activity. This compliments the idea of Wilderness—a designated, fenced off area outside of human development; to create preserved landscapes in the heart of the mountains solidifies the feeling that human impact of any kind is unnatural. As William Cronon explains in ‘The Trouble With Wilderness’, wilderness was once a description of places beyond human domain. Wild landscapes were barren, desolate, unknown and frightening. Our shift in wild sentiment likely began when more and more people moved off the land into cities—becoming less dependent on the natural world day to day, and thus being able to romanticize it from a dry, warm house.

Certain rhetoric around nature enforces this disconnect. Many describe mountains or rivers as sacred—however inflated that term has become. Sacred, originating from the Latin term sacrare, means to ‘make holy’ or to ‘set apart.’ Within the word is an instruction to set what we hold as sacred apart from our lives. Although many don’t consciously make this connection to the word, the attitude that arises from the hidden meaning hurts our ability to feel connected to other species and landscapes.

The counter to this sentiment becomes obvious when I spend a night in the mountains, or face a cold gust of wind on the prairie. Trekking over Half Moon Pass in the Big Snowy Mountains of central Montana, we walked cow and game trails, often relying on their footprints for the path of least resistance up a mountain. Letting out a yell at the top of the pass, like that of a curious coyote, we made ourselves known and affected the behavior and movement of every species on that side of the mountain.

The thirteen of us on Montana Afoot and Afloat don’t live in the Big Snowies. To us, this range is separate from our daily lives. But active populations do thrive in the foothills, relying on these hills for livestock grazing, outfitting guests, or hunting. The cowboys and hunters we passed on the trail live in our picturesque desktop screen-savers, and they are as affected by the natural system as any animal.

And for a week, we did depend on the natural system—its weather patterns, terrain changes, and water sources. If there is any argument to be made emphasizing our separation from nature, there needs to be an edit: Many people in Urban America have developed further away from the natural world, in an all too separate universe. But they are an exception, in my mind, to the rule that we are a part of the natural world, and human activity does exist in the wildest of places.

It’s my feeling that not acknowledging our place in nature can lead to a litany of dangers for mankind. Most importantly, this mindset leads to a lack of innate responsibility for nature. Growing up apart from the dirt, trees, and rivers encourages a vision of two worlds—one of humans and one of non-concrete, wildernesses; if it’s not a landscape or plot of land you grew up with and have a livelihood attached to, it becomes difficult to feel the commonality between yourself and the coyotes.