I wrote this while camping in the woods after reading Wendell Berry distinguishing between nature-lovers treating the outdoors as a “scenic” commodity versus the farmer (and anyone who eats food) being tied to it with much stronger bonds.
Is the wilderness a consumer good? Some folks want to live out here, but what are they going to do for a living? Write novels? Take photographs? Telecommute back to Oracle? Perhaps that is just affluence treating the forest like a slave. Like a strip-club patron throwing a twenty at the stage and shouting, “Dance!” We flex our purchasing power in order to buy a home on the edge of civilization. Oh, how natural of us. The forest doesn’t ask much of us though. It bides it’s time, occasionally bursting into flames on its own accord to brush off the brush and clear out campers.