Coming Home to the Wild

Florence R. Shepard

Abstract—Paul Shepard’s book “Coming Home to the Pleistocene” seasons, hunted accessible small animals, and scavenged (Shepard 1998), written during the last months of his life, is like a large dead bodies. Paul insisted that our most prized mirror held before us “thinking animals” that reflects our primal cognitive skills (that we wrongly attribute to the influence human being. This image (if comprehended and lived fully, Paul of civilization)—the ability to think and plan ahead, to counseled) can make us at home on planet Earth, rather than match our intellect with others in collaboration, to synthe- ecological misfits. We recognize this image, for at the heart of size many bits of information in appraising situations, to our identity is a fundamentally wild being, one who finds in the read signs, to create symbols that convey information, to whole of wild nature all that is true and beautiful in this world. design beautiful artistic expressions, to find joy in music and celebration and communion, to solve insurmountable obstacles through the use of cunning, and to relate exist- ence to the cosmos and acknowledge the spirit world—were In his address at the 5th World Wilderness Congress in not the legacy of civilization but were bequeathed us by our 1993, Paul Shepard (1998) put forth more assertively hunter-gatherer forebears. than ever before an idea he had been tracking for years. We But our cunning has turned against us in these last are, he proclaimed, wild to the core. Furthermore, our self- 10,000 years as we have over-stepped our human bounds consciousness and world view are based not on the teach- and ignored the “limits of the natural order” (Turner 1998). ings of civilization but rather on the biological legacy as We have changed the face of the earth more rapidly and well as the cultural influences passed on from our ancestors, more destructively than any meteoric catastrophe; our the Pleistocene hunter-gatherers. mindless exploitation of the Earth’s limited resources has He elaborated further that our genome, the genetic placed this planet in an ecological crisis since the turn of inheritance that identifies us as humans, has remained this century. relatively unchanged for the past 10,000 years. When we These changes came about as the result of two concomi- walked out of the Pleistocene we were essentially the same tant movements—through the domestication of plants and beings as we are today. In fact, because of the slow muta- animals and the sedentary life that agriculture promul- tion rate of genes in humans, our genome is essentially as gated as well as through pastoralism, the keeping of herds it was 100,000 years ago when ancestral humans roamed that created the conditions for ownership and surplus and the earth. And that genome, in turn, was the culmination of scarcity that stratified humans into classes. And with the the evolutionary change in still more ancient primate an- horse and its harnessed power came the capacity for invad- cestors whose brain size and body weight increased three- ing and conquering others. fold in the relatively short span of 2,000,000 years. We are, Along with these changes in lifestyle arose a different for the most part, he insisted, the same creatures who came spirituality. Mounted powerfully on prancing steeds, we down out of the trees on the forest edges, placed our feet turned our eyes and hearts away from the spiritual and firmly on the ground, looked around in an innately suspi- ecological sustenance of the earth and looked skyward for cious primate fashion, and began the game of chasing and a god, or gods, to save us from an earthly existence. We being chased. began to see life not as a seamless intertwining of past and Much smaller than the large carnivores, we developed present, but as a linear set of chronological events begin- the acumen to watch predators and prey around us, for we ning in the past, coming to the present, and leading on to the were both, and we learned from our adept fellow creatures. future. This life was not enough to satisfy us; we wanted Animals became our teachers, shaped our perception and paradise and immortality. We abandoned the wisdom of cognition, and gave us the basis for music, dance, ceremony, our own instincts, denied death as a part of the ever- and language. renewing cycle of life, and in the end, rejected the numinous From the beginning, we were omnivorous and gathered Earth as the source of life in favor of a material world where what was plentiful to eat, understood the phenology of the we were supreme, rational beings. Although during the first two decades of his adulthood, In: Watson, Alan E.; Aplet, Greg H.; Hendee, John C., comps. 2000. Paul Shepard lived an optimistic, tempestuous life of envi- Personal, societal, and ecological values of wilderness: Sixth World Wilder- ronmental activism, this turning away from the wisdom of ness Congress proceedings on research, management, and allocation, volume II; 1998 October 24–29; Bangalore, India. Proc. RMRS-P-14. Ogden, UT: U.S. the Earth worried Paul in his later years. In the early 1970’s, Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. he “became disillusioned with the environmental Florence R. Shepard is Professor Emerita at the University of Utah, movement…and no longer believed that understanding the an essayist and author of “Ecotone” (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994), widow of the late Paul Shepard, and editor of meaning of ecology would make any difference in turning “Coming Home to the Pleistocene,” 223 4th Ave., Salt Lake City, UT 84103 the public’s consumptive mind to a more sustainable U.S.A. e-mail: F.R.Shepard@ m.cc.utah.edu. All ideas presented, unless specifically attributed to others, have been taken or paraphrased from economy” (Shepard 1998). At that time he began looking Paul Shepard’s final book, “Coming Home to the Pleistocene” ( Washington, deeper into the origins of our problems, and in his writing DC: Island Press, 1998). presented what some think was a prophetic and visionary

USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-14. 2000 95 message. This thoughtful enterprise led him to explain establishes a dichotomy of places and banishes wild forms Western perceptions of ecology, animals as the language of to enclaves where they are encountered by audiences while nature, and the ontological (developmental) framework of the business of domesticating and denuding the planet the human life cycle. Through his research he became proceeds unabated. firmly bonded to the ancient hunter-gatherers and dreamed In a closing statement of his last book, Paul declared of a time when there was no distinction between the wild his own “primal closure.” “We go back,” he said, “with each and the tame. This thinking led him to discern the differ- day…with the rising and setting of the sun, each turning ences between the two concepts of wildness and wilderness. of the globe…to forms of earlier generations…we cannot Wildness, he said, is the state of our genome, our evolved avoid the inherent and essential demands of an ancient, genetic endowment that has been honed by evolution over repetitive pattern” (Shepard 1998). He implored us to millions of years. Like other uncontrolled creatures on return to the integrity of our genes, to trust them and follow Earth, he maintained, we are a wild species because our their lead, and to acknowledge our ontogeny (the biological genome has not been altered with certain ends in mind as pattern of growth and development during our life cycle) have the genomes of domesticated plants and animals that we inherited from our primal ancestors. that we have manipulated for our own purposes. Paul Our life-long development brings with it physical agreed with philosopher Holmes Rolston who said that changes that occur rapidly during the first years of life, wildness is not just something “behind” and separated from and with these changes come differing psycho-social re- ourselves, but is the “generating matrix” for what we are sponses. To these changes within each of us, however, there (Rolston 1983). Although we have taught each other social must be appropriate responses in the culture to mitigate our and cultural conventions in order to live together, and neoteny. Neoteny is that strange immaturity retained by although we are creatures that can adapt to deficient en- humans throughout our life cycle that makes us dependent vironments, we are more at peace, less stressed, and more on others and on the culture for help and support our whole sane in environments that resemble the ones in which we lives through as we confront critical life passages. evolved. That primal landscape, he reminded us, is still Young children require the firm nurturing of loving etched on our brains and is recognizable and familiar to us. caregivers, but as they grow and become more self-sufficient Without it, he insisted, we are ecological misfits and often they increasingly need opportunities for exploration in na- physical and mental wrecks. ture. Their cognitive development begins with the tax- Wilderness, on the other hand, is both a cognitive con- onomy of animals, who are like us and yet so different, who struction and a place we have dedicated to wildness that provide not only the basis for language categories but the provides the optimal conditions for the wild genome’s elabo- psychological basis for otherness, the understanding of dif- ration. We think of it as a place set aside, a realm of ference apart from the self. These initial explorations in purification outside civilization with beneficial, therapeu- childhood promote our identity formation as well as develop tic qualities, a release from the over-developed environ- the capacity for symbolic and metaphoric thought. ment and the disease of domestication. But we take wilder- Progressively more independent explorations in familiar ness too literally, too legalistically, he advised, and in the terrain widen and deepen children’s experiences. They process we lose the meaning for which it was intended, the begin with the topography of their mother’s and their own place where wildness can flourish. bodies and move progressively outward until their identity Early in his career, Paul Shepard gave up writing and takes in other creatures as well as their surroundings. thinking about wilderness landscapes as a key to our sense Eventually, as adolescents, the recognition of universe and of nature. He felt we had been corrupted not only by domes- cosmos blossoms, and at this time, their astonishing zeal tication but by the conventions of nature aesthetics, where should be accompanied by story and music and celebration we had been steered by Freud’s psychology depicting us as from the adult community to match their expanding cogni- creatures destined to suppressing sexual or combative tion and spirituality. urges. Nature, he asserted, has been oversold for four In the ideal world of our ancestors, children and youth, centuries as an aesthetic as opposed to a religious experi- as well as adults, live lives richly textured with play, sound, ence—even the spiritual uplift of wilderness is burdened and movement, and shared in common with people of vari- with our egocentric human purposes. When wilderness ous ages. Segregation by age groups is not a wise practice, became a subject matter in art, the criteria of excellence Paul advised. Without close contact and mentoring, prefer- became technique. In such a context, the real landscape is ably by adults who are not parents, youths, longing for objectified and distanced through photography or land- affiliation, congregate in groups (gangs) and try in their scape painting, or for that matter, through nature writing. own immature ways to “grow themselves up.” But without As a consequence of this abstraction of nature as art, masses guidance and bonding to nature and its wild creatures, they of people who are not interested in art analysis regard the grow into immature adults, ignorant of their place in an extinction of animals, demise of old-growth forest, pollution ecologically sustainable community. of the sea, and the whole range of environmentalist angst In a neo-primal community, adults find full and active as “elitist.” Wildness, he cautioned, cannot be captured on lives in place with emphasis on small group collaboration, film or on canvas; wildness is what we kill and eat because some independent family subsistence and sharing, self- we, too, are wild and are also eaten. We are a part of a restraint in accumulation of material wealth, diverse ac- sacred trophic community. tivities, and less emphasis on the individual household Paul warned us that the corporate world has drawn our and more on the sharing community. Prestige comes from attention away from wildness by negotiating parcels of integrity rather than from inheritance or fame. Participa- wilderness too small to allow random play of genes. This tion and broad representation in the political realm is

96 USDA Forest Service Proceedings RMRS-P-14. 2000 expected of all. Leadership is dispersed, emergent, and of a future paradise, but aspects of community within which dynamic; gender relations are egalitarian. Elders are im- our primal ancestors lived. We have only to go back to this portant keepers of stories and are revered and cared for. wisdom and bring it into our lives in every way possible. Paul used the “fire circle” as a metaphor as well as a We are all brothers and sisters in our genetic endow- literal example of community in which a small, cohesive ments, essentially alike, essentially wild. Cultures may group is bonded in discourse, communion, celebration, mu- differ in their ecological integrity and practices, but indi- tual support, and enlightenment—an interesting idea viduals within those cultures are made from the same stuff, around which we can fashion families, communities, and feel in the same way, and think and communicate in sur- work groups. Important events, like birth and death, are prisingly similar modes. In his life work, Paul Shepard chose seen as the binding matrix of spiritual existence. In such a to think about our wild nature within a greater ecological plan, no one is neglected or relegated to others. No one is community. He worked through the errors we have made, unimportant. We each take responsibility for others and pointed them out to us, and hoped that we will pick up his they for us as we give care, support, recognition, and respect. work and carry it forward. Throughout his life, his writing The primal community has many applications in our was a model of consilience; the unity of knowledge that modern world. It means living more firmly in place but E. O. Wilson has told us in his recent book is needed if we allows for periodic peregrinations or pilgrimages. With are going to preserve life on earth (Wilson 1998). rapid communication, we have opportunities to keep our I spend some time each year in a cabin in the Hoback fire circle cohesive and the members strongly supportive of Basin in the Greater Yellowstone Bioregion of the North- each other, even when they are separated by continents. ern Rockies of North America. Designated wildernesses as Narrative is a central motif. An integrated spirituality well as healthy public lands and national parks abound in pervades all aspects of life that brings a respect for other- this region. The headwaters of three great rivers of the ness. In a healthy and active community, members Western United States are born here. If anyone were to say acknowledge their need for ceremony that makes explicit to me that wilderness areas are a thing of the past, that their interdependence. they cannot be sustained, that they are not important or Welfare of other creatures and of the earth comes first, needed, or that it is too late for wilderness, I would argue not last, in the order of business in all arenas of steadfastly. Granted, my idea of wilderness is unique to the decisionmaking. Paul Shepard saw this community closely place where I live; there are other definitions of wilderness tied to sacred trophism through the practices of hunting throughout the world appropriate to other cultures and and gathering, where omnivory is the dietary plan with other bioregions. But, as Paul Shepard told us, at base they sacramental rather than sacrificial trophism. Rather than must have one common purpose. They must be places that restrictions, more emphasis is placed on the freedom of sustain wildness where the free play of genes is allowed to people to make choices to accommodate their developing take its course. psyches. This is the life cycle we inherited. This, implored We can view and define wilderness from differing cultural Paul Shepard, is the life cycle we should acknowledge. perspectives, but when we talk about the wild we are, I In terms of the larger view, Paul saw a world made up of believe, of one heart and mind. There is nothing relativistic three composite systems: genetic systems, ecosystems, and about wildness, nothing to be negotiated. Genes are either cultures. Each system is a mosaic of independent and dis- wild or they have been tamed. Wildness does not depend on tinct parts that are portable yet embedded, that can be the context. It is something fundamental to all our under- exchanged and recombined in an “integrated and lively standings and is not culturally based or socially con- conglomerate.” These three systems lie in horizontal prox- structed. We can all recognize it when we see and hear it, for imity, each affecting the other and responding to the other. it resonates within our own essential wild nature. It is the Although the genes dictate the range of feasibility, they reason we are here. It is the reason we are fighting for carry millions of years of possibilities for the interwebbing endangered species, for wilderness designations, and for our of creatures in ecosystems. Cultures arise in response to human being. the elaborations of genes and ecosystems and can result in rich and diverse human and creature-friendly societies and environments. References ______We cannot ignore what is possible in our own lives, within Shepard, Paul. 1998. Coming home to the Pleistocene. Washington, our family groups, and among our neighborhood communi- DC: Island Press/Shearwater books. 195 p. ties. Here, in this essential matrix, appropriate cultural Turner, Jack. 1998. Jacket cover quote from Coming Home to the responses can stabilize our home place and spill out into Pleistocene. the world at large. But our purpose in formulating plans Holmes, Rolston, III. 1983. Values gone wild. Inquiry. 26(2): 181- 207. must be to be true to wild nature within and outside of Wilson, E. O. 1998. Consilience. New York: Alfred A. Knoff. 332 p. ourselves. Our wildness, as Paul saw it, is not some dream

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