Between the wild and cultivated.

• Author: Lust, Marianne
• Position: Letters to the Editor - Letter to the editor

I write with respect for Terry Tempest Williams, the life she leads and the good work she does, as well as for her friend Jack Turner whom she quotes in her May column ("Not Ours to Exploit").

Turner claims: "What counts as wildness and wilderness is determined not by the absence of people, but by the relationship between people and place. A place is wild when its order is created according to its own principles of organization--when it is self-willed land."

I believe most strongly otherwise. Wilderness is not wilderness unless people are utterly absent.

In the view of indigenous people, certain wild places (most especially mountain peaks) and all creatures dwelling therein, all waters flowing above and below ground, are not meant to be entered by humans...