AT: " wilderness" or not. Re: [at-l] Trail Conservation.

[sloetoe@yahoo.com (Sloetoe)]

--- Bob Cummings <ellen@clinic.net> wrote:  To the more central
question, the Appalachian Trail is not wilderness by any definition
of the word that makes sense to me.

### Here's from Webster's II, Weary. This might have fit *any* of the
AT I walked. As well, on a good day, you can fly into/out of anyplace
north of the Artic Circle in a single engine plane, and thereby gain
(if fleeting) control of your immediate environs.

wilderness: 1. An uninhabited region left in its natural condition,
esp.: a. A large wild tract of land covered with dense vegetation or
forests. b. An extensive area, as a desert or ocean, that is barren
or empty: WASTE. c. A piece of land set aside to grow wild. 2.
Something likened to a wild region in its bewildering vastness,
perilousness, or unchecked profusion <*wilderness* of dissenting
voices>

wild: 1. Growing, living, or found in a natural state: not
domesticated, cultivated, or tamed. 2. Not inhabited: DESOLATE. 3.
Uncivilized or barbarous: SAVAGE. 4. Lacking discipline, restraint,
or control: UNRULY. 5. Disorderly: disarranged. 6. Incoherent or
chaotic: FRENZIED. 7. Full of intense, ungovernable emotion. 8.a.
Notoriously odd or amusing. b. Extravagent: fantastic. 9. Furiously
disturbed or turbulent: STORMY. 10. Reckless: risky. 11 Random or
spontaneous. 12. Deviating widely: ERRATIC. 13. Having an arbitrary
equivalence or value. Core meaning: An uninhabited or uncultivated
region.

### Anytime, *any*place*, that control is lost, there is found
"wilderness." Anytime, any place, that control is had, there is
*lost* "wilderness". "Wilderness" does not relate with geopolitical
boundaries; "wilderness" comports with whether your destiny is in
your own hands. It doesn't matter if we're talking Manhatten or
Manitoba, Katahdin or Catawba, or your back yard between 02:00 and
06:00 on a spring morning. If you loose control, you're peeking into
the abyss where, 500 years ago, they wrote "There be dragons..."

Sloetoe

=====
Spatior, Nitor, Nitor, In Nitor!

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