I completed a PhD in Environmental Studies at CU-Boulder in December 2022. My proudest academic writing accomplishment thus far is my dissertation. My master's thesis isn't too shabby either. Find me on Academia.
My research integrates philosophy, literary studies, writing, and social theory to work for conservation and environmental awareness.
More to come... Other writings can be found in Wild Places and Travels and in Writings. Watch my blog for updates as well.
My research integrates philosophy, literary studies, writing, and social theory to work for conservation and environmental awareness.
More to come... Other writings can be found in Wild Places and Travels and in Writings. Watch my blog for updates as well.
Of What Avail? Rethinking wilderness in the age of high technology
by Chris Dunn
(Written 2015)
Of what avail are 40 freedoms without a blank spot on the map?
-Aldo Leopold
In 1922 Aldo Leopold embarked on a journey to explore the Colorado River Delta – an intricate spiderweb of channels where “the river was nowhere and everywhere, for he [the river] could not decide which of a hundred green lagoons offered the most pleasant and least speedy path to the Gulf. So he traveled them all, and so did we. He divided and rejoined, he twisted and turned, he meandered in awesome jungles, he all but ran in circles, he dallied with lovely groves, he got lost and was glad of it, and so were we.”[1] Leopold witnessed a lush world of bobcats, deer, raccoons, coyotes, the elusive jaguar, and all variety of birds – duck, quail, geese, cranes and egrets. At the conclusion of describing his two-week-long trip paddling, camping, and cooking freshly hunted game over fragrant mesquite fires he asks the opening question.
We are aware of course that we live in a world very different to that when Leopold explored the Delta and later wrote about it in The Sand County Almanac, first published in 1945. The Colorado today almost never reaches the sea, at times ending nearly 100 miles short. Many of the world’s landscapes, such as the Colorado River Delta, are significantly altered. Yet we also have areas legally protected in their natural state as designated wilderness. Leopold was instrumental in the creation of the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico, the first American wilderness. It would later become formally designated under the Wilderness Act of 1964 which ensures that some lands remain undeveloped and untrammeled.
We should be grateful for the Wilderness Act and other protections afforded to wilderness and wild lands. Yet the world has continued on its relentless path of change with landscapes beyond the borders of protected wilderness changing much as the Colorado River Delta has. Meanwhile the development of the Internet and its various sibling forms of information technology has altered our human world, more so than perhaps anything else in recent history. Technology, specifically information technology, does endow us with many freedoms, for instance a previously unknown convenience, instantaneity, and access to the vast wealth of knowledge and information which the collective efforts of humanity have brought online.
However as we have been swept away by the allure – the new freedoms – that these technologies provide, I fear many of us have forgotten to consider of what avail, to what end, are these technologies directed, particularly as they relate to wilderness and other wild areas. These places, largely spared from the developments present on so much of the Earth such as clear cutting or road intrusion, have nevertheless been shaped by technological developments. Perhaps less noticeable, I will argue that technology has been similarly degrading to wilderness and wildness – we are losing blank spots on the map.
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by Chris Dunn
(Written 2015)
Of what avail are 40 freedoms without a blank spot on the map?
-Aldo Leopold
In 1922 Aldo Leopold embarked on a journey to explore the Colorado River Delta – an intricate spiderweb of channels where “the river was nowhere and everywhere, for he [the river] could not decide which of a hundred green lagoons offered the most pleasant and least speedy path to the Gulf. So he traveled them all, and so did we. He divided and rejoined, he twisted and turned, he meandered in awesome jungles, he all but ran in circles, he dallied with lovely groves, he got lost and was glad of it, and so were we.”[1] Leopold witnessed a lush world of bobcats, deer, raccoons, coyotes, the elusive jaguar, and all variety of birds – duck, quail, geese, cranes and egrets. At the conclusion of describing his two-week-long trip paddling, camping, and cooking freshly hunted game over fragrant mesquite fires he asks the opening question.
We are aware of course that we live in a world very different to that when Leopold explored the Delta and later wrote about it in The Sand County Almanac, first published in 1945. The Colorado today almost never reaches the sea, at times ending nearly 100 miles short. Many of the world’s landscapes, such as the Colorado River Delta, are significantly altered. Yet we also have areas legally protected in their natural state as designated wilderness. Leopold was instrumental in the creation of the Gila Wilderness in New Mexico, the first American wilderness. It would later become formally designated under the Wilderness Act of 1964 which ensures that some lands remain undeveloped and untrammeled.
We should be grateful for the Wilderness Act and other protections afforded to wilderness and wild lands. Yet the world has continued on its relentless path of change with landscapes beyond the borders of protected wilderness changing much as the Colorado River Delta has. Meanwhile the development of the Internet and its various sibling forms of information technology has altered our human world, more so than perhaps anything else in recent history. Technology, specifically information technology, does endow us with many freedoms, for instance a previously unknown convenience, instantaneity, and access to the vast wealth of knowledge and information which the collective efforts of humanity have brought online.
However as we have been swept away by the allure – the new freedoms – that these technologies provide, I fear many of us have forgotten to consider of what avail, to what end, are these technologies directed, particularly as they relate to wilderness and other wild areas. These places, largely spared from the developments present on so much of the Earth such as clear cutting or road intrusion, have nevertheless been shaped by technological developments. Perhaps less noticeable, I will argue that technology has been similarly degrading to wilderness and wildness – we are losing blank spots on the map.
READ MORE
Finding and Losing Meaning in Melting Arctic Landscapes
by Chris Dunn
(Written 2018)
Extreme environments, like those found in Arctic Alaska, have for over 10,000 years been a source of sustenance, meaning, and identity for Native Alaskans. Far more recently, the advent of Parks and Wilderness, created largely in response to an evolving material and social reality, has appended new value dimensions to portions of these landscapes.
This paper will begin to map out the terrain of value and meaning found herein, primarily through the lens of ontology, in its anthropological sense. In the process, the predominant view of meaning as a symbolic construct overlaid on an empty external world will be challenged. Rather, meaning emerges from relationships forged through deep engagement with places.
Climate change threatens not only the traditional subsistence livelihoods of Arctic residents, but also the emergent meanings that inhere in these landscapes. Simultaneously, the meaning and value of protected Arctic landscapes, particularly those designated as Wilderness, is also under duress.
Wilderness values, including especially an ethic of humility and restraint, have resulted in places left minimally developed, wherein wild processes are allowed to flow unimpeded—in contrast to the otherwise prevailing condition of land as an object of human design and impact. Climate change and the accompanying prospect of intensive ecological adaptation however threaten these values as well as the associated meanings found therein.
READ MORE
by Chris Dunn
(Written 2018)
Extreme environments, like those found in Arctic Alaska, have for over 10,000 years been a source of sustenance, meaning, and identity for Native Alaskans. Far more recently, the advent of Parks and Wilderness, created largely in response to an evolving material and social reality, has appended new value dimensions to portions of these landscapes.
This paper will begin to map out the terrain of value and meaning found herein, primarily through the lens of ontology, in its anthropological sense. In the process, the predominant view of meaning as a symbolic construct overlaid on an empty external world will be challenged. Rather, meaning emerges from relationships forged through deep engagement with places.
Climate change threatens not only the traditional subsistence livelihoods of Arctic residents, but also the emergent meanings that inhere in these landscapes. Simultaneously, the meaning and value of protected Arctic landscapes, particularly those designated as Wilderness, is also under duress.
Wilderness values, including especially an ethic of humility and restraint, have resulted in places left minimally developed, wherein wild processes are allowed to flow unimpeded—in contrast to the otherwise prevailing condition of land as an object of human design and impact. Climate change and the accompanying prospect of intensive ecological adaptation however threaten these values as well as the associated meanings found therein.
READ MORE