Wildness

 

THOUGHT OF THE DAY:

                          "In Wildness is the preservation of the World." - Henry David Thoreau, from his 1862 essay [*Walking*](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1022/pg1022-images.html).  

Something he would say.

It really is quintessential Thoreau.

The full line, from Walking, is often quoted as "In Wildness is the preservation of the World," though he originally emphasized Wildness with a capital W. He wasn't merely talking about untouched forests or wilderness areas. For Thoreau, "Wildness" was a quality of nature—and perhaps of human beings—that resisted excessive domestication, regulation, and conformity.

Given everything else he wrote, one can almost hear him saying it while standing ankle-deep in a swamp and disapproving of a railroad.

What's interesting is that the quote has aged remarkably well. In 1862, many readers would have taken it as a romantic observation. Today it sounds almost prophetic: biodiversity loss, habitat destruction, climate concerns, and even the psychological effects of living in increasingly artificial environments all make the sentence feel contemporary.

It also has a certain New England stubbornness to it. Thoreau wasn't saying wildness was pleasant, profitable, or efficient. He was saying it was necessary.

As you put it: something he would say. Some quotations are so perfectly matched to their author that if they hadn't actually said them, we'd suspect they should have.

Had he encountered a bear he might have thought otherwise.

Quite possibly!

Thoreau's relationship with wildness was a bit romanticized. He certainly knew the woods around Concord, but mid-19th-century Massachusetts was already a heavily settled landscape. The truly dangerous North American frontier was farther west. A black bear encounter in New England was possible but uncommon, and grizzlies were something he knew mostly from reports.

There's a recurring pattern in human thought: people tend to praise wild nature most enthusiastically when it is near enough to visit but not quite near enough to eat them.

That said, Thoreau wasn't entirely naive. In Walking and elsewhere, he admired nature precisely because it was indifferent to human wishes. He disliked the tendency to tame, fence, and organize everything. A bear would have been evidence of wildness, even if he preferred observing it from a respectful distance.

Many conservationists today share that contradiction. They want wolves, bears, and mountain lions to exist—and preferably not in their backyard. The preservation of the world, yes; the preservation of one's skin, also yes.

What he lived in was not really wild. Not just no bears, but also penetrable: paths and whatnot, and ready access to help.

I think that's a fair criticism of Thoreau, and one that has often been made.

When people hear "wild," they may picture the Yukon, the Amazon, or the Serengeti. Thoreau's woods around Concord were nothing like that. They had roads, farms, woodlots, neighboring houses, and people within walking distance. Even his famous stay at Walden Pond was only a couple of miles from town. If he had fallen seriously ill, he could have walked home or sent for help.

In a sense, he experienced what we might call managed wildness—nature that felt untamed enough to inspire reflection but was still embedded in a settled society.

This is one reason some frontier writers had a rather different perspective. People who actually faced blizzards, droughts, wolves, bears, isolation, crop failure, or getting lost hundreds of miles from help often spoke of nature with more respect and less reverence. They could admire it while also recognizing it as something that could kill them quite casually.

On the other hand, Thoreau might have replied that physical danger was not his point. He wasn't measuring wildness by the probability of being eaten. He was contrasting a spontaneous, self-directed world with an increasingly industrial and regimented human one. A swamp full of frogs could represent "wildness" to him even if the nearest tavern was a short walk away.

Still, if you dropped him alone in grizzly country with no trails, no map, and no possibility of rescue, I suspect his essays would have acquired a slightly different tone. There is a difference between contemplating wilderness and depending on it.

I love camping, but I want my tent and mosquito repellent and matches and flashlight, and of course my car parked up the hill a bit.

That may be closer to the way most of us actually relate to nature.

We like nature best when it remains nature, but with a few carefully selected concessions to civilization. The ideal campsite for many people is one where you can feel wonderfully remote while knowing that if it starts raining sideways, you can retreat to the car, drive to a diner, and order pie.

There's an old joke that wilderness is a place where the Wi-Fi is weak but the emergency services are strong.

I suspect Thoreau himself was more like that than his reputation suggests. Walden Pond wasn't a survival exercise. He brought tools, borrowed things from neighbors, visited town, entertained guests, and generally remained connected to society. He was experimenting with simplicity, not trying to become a mountain man.

What you're describing is also one reason national parks are so popular. They offer a carefully curated version of wildness: forests, mountains, wildlife, campfires—and nearby roads, maps, rangers, toilets, and search-and-rescue teams. Enough uncertainty to feel adventurous, not enough to be reckless.

Most people, if they're honest, don't want true wilderness. True wilderness is where a broken ankle can become a life-threatening event. What we usually want is the experience of wildness, with a safety net discreetly hidden behind the scenery. Thoreau's Concord woods fit that model rather well.

 

By the way, I would suggest his capitalizing "Wildness" is less emphasis and more personification.

 

That's a good literary observation. Nineteenth-century writers capitalized a number of abstract concepts that we wouldn't capitalize today, and often the effect was to make them feel almost like characters or forces rather than mere qualities.

When Thoreau writes Wildness rather than wildness, he's not just putting verbal italics on the word. He's treating it as something larger and more autonomous—almost a principle, perhaps even a spiritual force. In the same era you'd encounter capitalized abstractions like Nature, Liberty, Providence, Civilization, and sometimes even Truth or Beauty.

The sentence reads differently depending on which interpretation you take:

• "In wildness is the preservation of the world" suggests a descriptive claim: untamed nature helps sustain life.
• "In Wildness is the preservation of the World" suggests that Wildness is an active, almost mythic thing, a counterpart to Civilization.

That second reading feels very Thoreauvian. He often wrote as though Nature were not merely a collection of trees and ponds but an independent presence with its own authority and wisdom.

It also fits the Transcendentalist habit of turning abstractions into something nearly theological. Emerson did this constantly. By capitalizing Wildness, Thoreau elevates it from a condition to an idea—almost a proper noun.

So yes, I think "personification" gets closer to the effect than "emphasis." The capitalization invites the reader to meet Wildness as a force in the drama, not just an adjective in the scenery.