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interview
roderick nash
Many readers of this journal have been inspired by Roderick Nash's Wilderness and the American Mind and The Rights of Nature, two of the foundational texts in environmental history, but some may be less familiar with his role in establishing environmental studies as an academic discipline and with his well-deserved reputation as one of this country's premier whitewater boatmen. In this interview, we ask Nash to talk not only about his path-breaking scholarly work, but also about his passion for the outdoors and his role as an environmental advocate.
Editor and Associate Editor: We would like you to begin by telling us about your experience as a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin in the early 1960s and also what it was like to work with Professor Merle Curti, one of the most celebrated U.S. intellectual historians of his era. Did you begin your graduate studies as an intellectual historian or did you discover Curti and his field once you were there?
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| Nash: I met Professor Curti in 1959 when I was a Harvard history major. I was engaged in writing a senior thesis about a fugitive slave riot in 1851 that resulted in the death of a slave-owner. It amounted to a test of the so-called Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act. I was interested in the extent to which Americans both north and south anticipated the Civil War a decade before it occurred. This was a study in the history of ideas, Merle Curti's forte, and he encouraged me to come to the University of Wisconsin and work with him in the fall of 1960. I began my dissertation by investigating the Hetch Hetchy controversy of the early twentieth century, which resulted in the congressional decision to allow a dam to be placed in Yosemite National Park. Several books have recently been written about Hetch Hetchy and the issues dividing John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, and the early conservation movement. |
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As I got into the research I began to see that it involved the much longer and more complex story of the American relationship with wilderness. I recall telling Curti that I'd like to write about wilderness. Initially taken aback, he suggested I might want to enroll in the biology or geology programs. But after I explained that my real interest was not the physical reality but the idea of wilderness, he became enthusiastic. And instead of advising me to keep a narrow focus in the dissertation as most mentors tend to do, Curti encouraged me to look at the big picture: the "cultural context" that explained the popularity of an idea. And he was comfortable with my working in a wide array of disciplines as he had done in his Pulitzer-prize winning book The Growth of American Thought. The result was Wilderness and the American Mind, which I submitted as a dissertation in 1964. It's really intellectual history, but some think of it as opening doors to a new field: environmental history. |
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Editor and Associate Editor: Other than Curti, were there any other historians (at Wisconsin or elsewhere) whose work was especially important to you during your graduate years? Of course, we are particularly interested in scholars who triggered your interest in the field that later became environmental history, but we would also like to know about other major influences on your dissertation and on your later teaching and research interests.
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Nash: More than historians, it was ecologists and natural resource specialists from whom I learned in Madison. Some of them were students, or colleagues, of Aldo Leopold, who taught at Wisconsin in the 1930s and 1940s. I had begun to think that Leopold was a major figure in the story of evolving American thought about wild nature, even on a par with Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, but in 1960 his work was relatively little known. Needing some "summer money," I proposed to the University of Wisconsin Archives that they hire me to gather and sort his papers. It was a perfect job because I was actually doing my own dissertation research at the same time! I recall having difficulty convincing Leopold's widow that anyone, particularly historians, would have an interest in those old cartons of notes, correspondence, and papers. But she permitted me to tote them to the archives, and they became the genesis of one of the richest collections of evidence about forestry, wildlife management, and, in general, changing American ideas toward nature.
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Editor: At the time you wrote Wilderness and the American Mind (1967), few intellectual historians other than Perry Miller thought of "nature" and "wilderness" as falling within their field of study. What led you to ask about the idea of wilderness? And what led you to combine intellectual, cultural, and environmental history?
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Nash: I was born on Manhattan Island, the heart of New York City, and the view from my bedroom window for eighteen years was a brick wall. I was citified enough to appreciate wilderness. For me, wilderness was an exciting novelty, and with the help of my parents I took every possible opportunity to get out of the city and into wild country. It was the same way with other New York kids: Theodore Roosevelt and Bob Marshall come to mind. Before I enrolled at Harvard, I knew wilderness would be the focus of my recreational interests. Toward the end of college, when I was contemplating an academic career in history, I wondered what subject would be worthy of years of thought and research. Why not, I reasoned, spend all that time studying what I really liked. Following my bliss, in a sense, the result was the wilderness book. It's a good book, but I am humbled by the realization that it was also a very lucky book. I chose the right time to write about wilderness. Consider that the Wilderness Act was passed the same year as I completed the dissertation. From another perspective, some have said Wilderness and the American Mind was a book that changed the world. I am grateful, but I would counter with the thought that the world was ready to be changed. Why this was so was, of course, is the subject of my research. I wrote about the very factors that explained the popularity of the book.
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Editor: One of the most impressive features of Wilderness and the American Mind is the sheer abundance of its sources. Almost every paragraph contains a striking quotation. Could you tell us something about how you composed the book? How long did it take you to do the massive amounts of primary source reading? Which major secondary sources did you find useful?
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Nash: Thank you! It was indeed a massive undertaking. But, as stated, it was something I loved to do. I never thought of the research as "work." These were books I wanted to read regardless of my profession. I can single out as an influential secondary source the work of Frederick Jackson Turner who, like Leopold, had taught in Madison in the early twentieth century. His interest had been the impact of the frontier experience on the American character. I wanted to know more about what Americans thought about the wilderness conditions that made a frontier. Another scholar who inspired me was Henry Nash (no relation) Smith and his Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Harvard, 1950).
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Editor: Do you have a favorite among the authors whose work you discussed in Wilderness and the American Mind?
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Nash: I loved the writing of Sigurd Olson, whose passion was for the canoe trails of the voyageurs in Minnesota and western Ontario. Occasionally during graduate school I would sneak in a trip to the Quetico-Superior country and think about Olson's understanding of the compelling lure of the "old ways" of wilderness travel. Olson and Leopold explain the appeal of wilderness as well as any American writers. Of course, I admired Thoreau as a mind a generation ahead of his time. Dave Foreman is a contemporary writer from whom I always learn.
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Associate Editor: You taught some of the first classes in environmental history in the United States. What led you to do so? How did you organize them? What were the students' reactions to them? How influential was the ferment of the late 1960s and early 1970s on your teaching of environmental issues?
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Nash: Yes, I think my class in environmental history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was among the first offered in the country. I believe that was 1969. Student interest was intense. I think I had three hundred enrolled the first time. The subject appealed to students questioning the old axioms of American history such as the equivalency of growth and progress. In a sense this was also the beginning of what is called New Western History. We paid attention to minorities and there were none more oppressed than the components of wild nature. I liked to make students aware that nature was also an oppressed minority.
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Associate Editor: How did the Santa Barbara Oil Spill of January 28, 1969, shape your subsequent work as a teacher and scholar?
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Nash: The Santa Barbara Oil Spill certainly fueled the fire of this kind of concern. Reacting to it, a group of faculty started a new interdisciplinary major at UC Santa Barbara called environmental studies in 1970. We thought the program marked a needed reform in how universities were organized and the kinds of issues they addressed. Students called environmental studies "relevant." I chaired the program for its first five years. I was an assistant professor at the time. Some of my senior colleagues thought I was crazy and should focus on my research. Somehow, however, I found time to crank out the publications and still make my profession more responsive to environmental problems. I held a joint appointment in history and environmental studies until my retirement in 1993. Some faculty have been hostile (read "jealous" in some cases) to environmental studies, but I think UC Santa Barbara is proud of being a pioneer in interdisciplinary and problem-oriented teaching.
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Associate Editor: How did the Santa Barbara Declaration of Environmental Rights, which you authored, come about? What was the reaction to it, on and off campus?
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Nash: I was a 30-year old-assistant professor in 1969 at the time of the Santa Barbara Oil Spill. Like most Santa Barbarans, I went down to the beach after the blowout on January 28 and watched the black tide come in. One response, as I just mentioned, was to head the committee that started the new major environmental studies major the next year. The other was to respond to the call of the "January 28 Committee" for a declaration to be read on the one-year anniversary of the spill. I took a copy of Jefferson's Declaration of Independence on my colleague's (Dr.Barry Schuyler's) sailboat out to the Channel Islands, which had been pretty well covered by the spill. I just sat in the cockpit, remembered the best ideas I had been teaching and researching in the late 1960s, and wrote the Santa Barbara Declaration of Environmental Rights. It could have been more ecocentric—focusing on the rights of the environment rather than the rights of people to a healthy environment—but I had not yet moved my research focus to environmental ethics as I did in The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics (1989). Still, many seemed moved by the brief statement that I read before network TV cameras on January 28, 1970. My then 8-year-old daughter wrote her own statement about the damage to the beach environment where she played and I think it stole the show that day.
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Editor: In a review of Donald Worster's The Wealth of Nature (Oxford, 1993), you wrote: "Worster is an environmental historian, and the credo he sets forth in this book is that such people must take on the responsibility of helping reform human conduct toward nature. In this regard he is not very different from, say, women's or African-American historians who frequently have agendas beyond just telling the story. The point is that Worster is not afraid to be an environmentalist as well as a historian of the environment. He believes his craft can be a powerful tool for building ecological understanding and environmental responsibility. It is difficult, in my estimation, to fault such a perspective." How have you tried to balance "objectivity" and "advocacy" in your career?
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Nash: I always tried hard to keep my scholarship and activism separate. I regard my books as tools that activists can use. Sometimes I used them myself! For instance, understanding the importance of wilderness in American culture is a powerful weapon in fighting for its preservation. As a scholar I tried to tell as complete and accurate a story as possible. If one calls that "objectivity" then that was what gave my books the credibility even opponents of wilderness have had to acknowledge. I wanted, in sum, to be known as an historian rather than a partisan.
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Associate Editor: The Rights of Nature weaves together a complex (and cross-cultural) history of environmental ethics with a compelling call for the creation of a constitutional amendment that would protect the rights of nonhuman life. What prompted you to write this book and to issue this challenge at a time when Ronald Reagan was president and the country was in a conservative mood? What were the reactions to it? Were there any legislative attempts to codify your proposed amendment, either at the state or federal level? Would you still argue that such legislative protection is necessary?
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| Nash: In The Rights of Nature, I knew I was entering treacherous territory in regard to objectivity. In the preface I tried to explain that I would be studying, not prescribing, ways to think about the rights of humans balanced against those of nature. I wrote that "I am ... less concerned about whether a particular ethical position is politically responsible, philosophically correct, or scientifically valid than I am with the fact that it was expressed, the context in which the expression occurred, and its consequences for further thought and action." This I believe is the proper credo of the intellectual historian that I learned from Merle Curti years ago. I don't recall making the "compelling call for the creation of a constitutional amendment that would protect the rights of nature" that you mention in your question. I did write, of course, about people who believed this and I cited an article in Environmental Law where this idea was proposed, but I did not myself champion it in my book. The distinction is important. |
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By the way, the translation of both Wilderness and the American Mind and The Rights of Nature into Chinese, Japanese, and several other languages has been a great source of satisfaction to me. That these ancient cultures would find something interesting in the last several hundred years of American environmental thought is remarkable. I do not believe these books would have been as well received abroad if they were arguments instead of analyses.
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Associate Editor: In The Big Drops (1979), which you coauthored with Robert Collins, you write about ten legendary rapids in the American West. Why is kayaking so important to your life? How have, more generally, your activities in "the great outdoors" framed your environmental sensibilities? What for you has been the interplay between "nature" as a scene of recreation and "nature" as a source of intellectual creativity?
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Nash: I have really led several lives. Many people know me as a pioneering whitewater boatman with fifty-some descents of the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon and are surprised that I was also a professor and scholar. I started running rivers in Wyoming in the 1950s as a summer job during my college years. When I realized I had run most of the legendary rapids in the American West, I wrote a book about them: The Big Drops. Someone calculated I have floated the equivalent of two circumnavigations of the Earth at the equator. For me, keeping an oar in the water has always been a way to maintain contact with natural processes and wild places. Just as a scholar of the Renaissance needs to travel in Italy, I felt I was a more sensitive writer and teacher because I walked the talk in wild country.
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Editor: One of the liveliest recent controversies about the meaning of "wilderness" began with Bill Cronon's essay, "The Trouble with Wilderness, or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature," which Environmental History published in January 1996. Would you like to comment on that debate?
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| Nash: Bill Cronon's father, David, was a professor and administrator at the University of Wisconsin from whom I enjoyed learning. The trouble with Bill's thesis is that he is confusing perception and reality. He tells us wilderness does not exist and never has (given the Indian presence) in North America. This may be so from the standpoint of a geographer, but "wilderness," unlike mountains and canyons and forests, is a perceived reality, a quality. It has more to do with the geography of the mind than of the land. Wilderness is a state of mind. I thought I explained this quite fully in the opening pages of Wilderness and the American Mind. The corollary of this concept is that of course wilderness existed in American history because many Americans used the concept to describe their environment. As I'm sure Bill knows, because he wrote a fine book on the subject, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (Hill and Wang, 1983), most colonists regarded native people (Indians) as savages who added to, not detracted from, the wilderness condition. |
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As far as being the "wrong nature" to which to aspire, I disagree strongly. Sure, people "belong" to nature, but that does not mean 6 billion of them should be everywhere. Other species, who can not tolerate the highly civilized variety of humans, have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on their own terms. Preserved wilderness is a gesture of restraint on the part of a species notorious for its greed. It's a symbol of hope that humans might turn out to be good ecological neighbors on this planet after all.
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Editor: The distinguished biologist Edward O. Wilson has just published a book entitled The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth (W.W. Norton, 2006), in which he argues that environmental activists and evangelical Christians can and should work together to save what remains of the earth's biodiversity. From the perspective of your chapter on "The Greening of Religion" in The Rights of Nature, do you think that Wilson's version of "the gospel of ecology," his strategy of identifying "the Creation" with biodiversity, might have a chance of success?
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Nash: I have only read a review of Ed Wilson's book, but he is following the philosophy that I discussed in "The Greening of Religion." It's the obvious train of thought. If the deity made the Earth, then its destruction is a sacrilegious act. This idea should appeal to even the most intense religious minds. And it's so important because I have long felt that religion is one of the few forces that can trump economics. It can jolt people out of a strictly self-interested stance. So, yes, there is a chance of success. I thought American religion was moving strongly toward a greener, less-dualistic perspective, but the rants of the religious right have in recent years shaken my confidence. Still, we know that great intellectual revolutions are slow and partial things.
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Editor and Associate Editor: It is no secret that we regard you as one of the founders of the field of environmental history. We would guess that half of the members of the ASEH were born after the publication of the first edition of Wilderness and the American Mind; and even The Rights of Nature is now approaching its twentieth anniversary. What have been some of the principal surprises, satisfactions, and disappointments as you have watched the field develop over the past five decades?
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Nash: In Wilderness and the American Mind, I wrote a "big picture" book. I have been delighted to see later environmental historians pay monographic attention to the people and events I sketched. What emerges from this scholarly attention is one of the greatest stories every told. If you begin with the challenges of Galileo and Copernicus up through Darwin and on to the ecologists and environmental ethicists, you have a revolution of major proportions in how humans viewed themselves in their natural context. The transformation in attitude toward wilderness (including the expansion of ethics to include nature) will be increasingly recognized as a major sea change in intellectual history. I am disappointed, of course, in recent attacks on the Endangered Species Act, the Wilderness Act, and the public lands idea in general, but I am mindful that all great ideas go through three stages: ridicule, discussion, and adoption. We are clearly in the discussion phase of an ecocentric perspective.
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Editor and Associate Editor: If you were beginning a career as an environmental historian in 2007, what kinds of topics and/or approaches would you find most appealing or promising?
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| Nash: I would like to see beginning environmental historians ferret out the small stories of the people and the causes that have made and are making a difference. What are the change agents in both thought and action? What does the history of reform tell us about the ways we move from ridicule to adoption? In the concluding pages of The Rights of Nature, I tried to make a general case for the parallels between the abolitionists of the early nineteenth century and environmentalists in recent decades. This is particularly interesting because the abolitionists won! How and why? I hope environmental history can help society better understand the possibilities of change. |
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Interview conducted September 2006
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SELECTED PUBLICATIONS OF RODERICK NASH | |
BOOKS
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| Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967). Second edition in 1973, revised editions in 1983 and 2001.The Big Drops: Ten Legendary Rapids (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1978). Revised edition in 1989.The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989).Editor, The American Environment (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1968). Revised editions in 1976 and 1990 as American Environmentalism.
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ARTICLES
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| "Widening the Circle: A Sand County Almanac After Fifty Years," Defenders 74 (Spring 1999): 34–39."'Wilderness,' The Place Of Wild Beasts: The Intellectual Revolution of the 1890's," in Value In American Wildlife Art, ed. Peter Friedici (Jamestown, NY: Peterson Institute, 1993), 10–20."Historical Roots of Wilderness Management" and "International Concepts of Wilderness Preservation and Management," in Wilderness Management, ed. John C. Hendee, George H. Stankey, and Robert C. Lucas (Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 1990), 27–47, 65–96."Aldo Leopold and the Limits of American Liberalism," in Aldo Leopold: The Man and His Legacy, ed. Thomas Tanner (Ankeny, IA: Soil Conservation Society, 1987), 53–85."Aldo Leopold's Intellectual Heritage," in Companion to A Sand County Almanac: Interpretive and Critical Essays, ed. J. Baird Callicott (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), 63–88."Wilderness Values and the Colorado River," in New Courses for the Colorado River: Major Issues of the Next Century, ed. Gary D. Weatherford and F. Lee Brown (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1986), 201–13. Reprinted in A River Too Far: The Past and Future of the Arid West, ed. Joseph Finkhouse and Mark Crawford (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1991), 109–21."Rounding Out the American Revolution: Ethical Extension and the New Environmentalism," in Deep Ecology, ed. Michael Tobias (San Diego: Avant, 1984), 170–81. Reprinted in Environmental History: Critical Issues in Comparative Perspective, ed. Kendall E. Bailes (New York: University Press of America, 1985), 242–57, and in Ecoresistance, ed. Harold Mesch (Berlin: Gulliver, 1990), 56–68."The Roots of American Environmentalism," in Indiana Historical Society Lectures 1983: Perceptions of the Landscape and Its Preservation (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1984): 29–50."Tourism, Parks and the Wilderness Idea in the History of Alaska," Alaska in Perspective 4 (1981): 1–27."Managing Wilderness: Contradiction or Necessity?," in Rutgers University Discussion Paper Series, No. 9, ed. Robert W. Lake (New Brunswick, NJ: Department of Geography of Rutgers University, 1980)."The Exporting and Importing of Nature: Nature Appreciation as a Commodity, 1850–1980," Perspectives in American History 12 (1979): 517–60."National Park," Encyclopedia Americana (New York: Grolier, 1979), 766–81."Who Loves a Swamp?," in Strategies for Protection and Management of Floodplain Wetlands and Other Riparian Ecosystems, "U. S. Forest Service General Technical Report WO12," ed. R. Roy Johnson and J. Frank McCormick (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1979), 149–56."Changing Conceptions of the Meaning and Purpose of Protected Wildland: Implications for River Management," in Managing Colorado Whitewater: The Carrying Capacity Strategy, ed. Lawrence Royer, William H. Becker, and Richard Schreyer (Logan: Utah State University, 1978), 73–89."Do Rocks Have Rights?," Center Magazine 10 (November/December 1977): 212. Reprinted in Principles of Environmental Law, ed. J. Marc McGinnes (Santa Barbara, CA: Rainbow Bridge, 1980), 619, and, in part, in Environmental Studies, ed. D. B. Botkin and E. A. Keller (New York: Merrill, 1982)."Thoughts on Environmental Ethics," in Small Comforts for Hard Times: Humanists on Public Policy, ed. Florian Stuber and Michael Mooney (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 120–34."The Value of Wilderness," Environmental Review 3 (1977): 14–25."Preserving the Wilderness," in The American Destiny: An Illustrated Bicentennial History of the United States, 20 vols., ed. Marcus Cunliffe, Maldwyn A. Jones, and Edward Horton (New York: Danbury, 1976), 13: 105–15."Wilderness: To Be Or Not To Be?," in Nature and Human Nature, ed. William Burch, Jr., Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies Bulletin No. 90 (New Haven: Yale University, 1976), 27–39."Environmental Ethics," in Environmental Spectrum: Social and Economic View on the Quality of Life, ed. Ronald Clarke and Peter List (New York: Van Nostrand, 1974), 142–50."Rivers and Americans: A Century of Conflicting Priorities," in Environmental Quality and Water Development, ed., Charles R. Goldman, James McEvoy III, and Peter J. Richerson (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1973), 78–94."American Environmental History: A New Teaching Frontier," Pacific Historical Review 61 (August 1972): 363–72."Can We Afford Wilderness?," in Environment Man Survival: Grand Canyon Symposium, ed., L. H. Wullstein, I. B. McNulty, and L. Klikoff (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1971), 97–111."The American Invention of National Parks," American Quarterly 22 (Fall 1970): 726–35."The State of Environmental History," in The State of American History, ed. Herbert J. Bass (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970), 249–60."Conservation and the Colorado," in The Grand Colorado: The Story of a River and Its Canyons, ed. T. H. Watkins (Palo Alto, CA: American West, 1969), 259–71."Wilderness and Man in North America," in The Canadian National Parks: Today and Tomorrow, ed. J. G. Nelson and R. C. Scace, 2 vols. (Calgary, Alberta: University of Calgary, 1969), 1: 66–93."John Muir, William Kent, and the Conservation Schism," Pacific Historical Review 36 (November 1967): 423–33. Reprinted in Interpreting 20th Century America, ed. Richard Lowitt and Joseph Wall (New York: Crowell, 1973)."The American Cult of the Primitive," American Quarterly 18 (Fall 1966): 517–37. Reprinted in Patterns in American History, vol. 2, 3rd ed., ed. Alexander Deconde, et al. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1973)."The Strenuous Life of Bob Marshall," Forest History 10 (October 1966): 19–23."The American Wilderness in Historical Perspective," Forest History 6 (Winter, 1963): 2–13. Reprinted in From Conservation to Ecology: The Development of Environmental Concern, ed. Carroll Pursell (New York: Crowell, 1973).
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