By Clazre Stirling

WATER AS}!

Wilderness: not just a set of endangered

spaces, but the capacity of things to elude the
mind's appropriations - Den McKay, Vis a Vis:
Fieldnotes On Poetry and Wilderness

“The idea that we are at the mercy o

here is a lake at the base of a glacier, nestled
between several peaks high in the mountains.
There are no roads or trails, and for all intents
and purposes, the lake is completely inac-
cessible to people. Sparkling and turquoise,
this lake is untouched, wild. As Don McKay,
the Canadian poet and educator would write,
the lake “[eludes] the mind's appropriations”
in its purity, in its rawness (21). But so does, |
would argue, the highly developed Columbia
River with its dams; that pond along the high-
way that is little more than a mud hole come
mid-August; or the small stream that runs
behind my fence line.
All water is wilderness. As humans, our reli-
ance on water for survival has enabled us to
regard this element as a resource, an object
to control and distribute as we see fit. When
a natural process or system fails to conform
to our notions of right to ownership, such as
when a lack of rainfall leads to a drought, we
say we have a water problem. In reality, we
have a human problem. This ultimate lack of
control and the impossibility of true ownership
will always, ultimately, render water firmly in the
wilderness.
Vis-a-vis the wilderness, we are faced with our
lack of control, and home becomes ever more
important. Home is the anchor that keeps us
steady in an otherwise chaotic and frightening
world. Home is the “action of inner life finding

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