NOSNIGOY NVHLYNOF ‘LSILYV

liance on water for survival has enabled
us to regard this element as a resource,

we own the right to destroy it...”

outer form; it is the settling of self in the world” (McKay, 21). It provides a lens through which we view
our surroundings and understand our experiences. From this vantage point, we are able to justify
what McKay calls first appropriation whereby we claim ownership over those things we rely upon for
survival: “the hand grasps the thing and removes it from its element, relieving it of its autonomy” (22).
We name rivers and lakes; we build dams and reservoirs to supply farms with irrigation and homes
with drinking water. The idea that we are at the mercy of nature is terrifying, and the attempted seizure
of this basic element offers us a sense of security
from the wilderness, despite the tenuous nature
of this claim.
Once we have claimed ownership of some-
an object to control...” thing, we then move on to what McKay calls
the second appropriation. In this process, we
confer our right to not merely the possession
and use of a thing, but our right to own its very essence. McKay describes this act upon matter as
“the colonization of its death” (20).
Imagine that, while fishing on Kootenay Lake, | caught a Gerrard rainbow trout. | took that enormous
fish home and grilled the fillets on a cedar plank. Once | had claimed ownership of that fish, its value
lay in its ability to provide my family with sustenance. Now imagine that, instead of cooking it, | had
taken the fish to a taxidermist who stuffed and mounted it for me to hang on my wall. The exhibition
of the corpse of the trout illustrates that the appropriation is complete, “controlling its death, as well
as taking its life” (McKay, 19). This is how we treat water. We dump waste in water bodies that we
use for human consumption; this leads to unnaturally increased levels of certain nutrients, such as
phosphorus, which in turn causes large blooms of blue-green algae, a species of bacteria that is
harmful to humans. We believe we do not merely own a lake, we own the right to destroy it and then,
when the lake reacts and asserts its presence, we have the audacity to call the lake toxic.
We build dams, impose household water meters and bills, but we cannot own water nor can we
control it. We build our houses ona hill near a stream. We own that stream, we say, it is ours. When a
rainstorm swells the stream, and sends a mountainside

“We believe we do not merely own a lake of mud cascading down on us, we are reminded that

water is wilderness. When the boat that capsizes on an
ocean wave sends its unfortunate occupants flailing and
helpless into the unknown depths, we recognize that
water is wilderness.

As | write, the Columbia River moves unceasingly, passing just beyond the window. | sip my coffee,
relishing the rare winter sunshine that makes the water shimmer, and | cannot help but recall that
many people have lost their lives on this very stretch of river, swallowed by the water to become
part of the river itself. In these mortal reminders, when our physical remains return to the earth, we
are forced to confront an uncomfortable truth: wilderness is not some remote place separate from
human existence. The wilderness is in everything we think we own or control but cannot. Always
present, the wilderness waits patiently beneath our comfortable idealizations and obstinate claims
of ownership for the next opportunity to pull us back, compelling us to face our terrifying limitations
and mortality.

References
McKay, Don. Vis a Vis: Fieldnoles On Poetry and Wilderness.
Wolfville, N.S.: Gaspereau Press, 2001. Pp.14-25

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