Nature on Exhibit

One concept that really stood out to me in today’s class discussion was Borgmann’s notion that parks have become museums of nature. This is certainly a valid classification for today’s public recreational parks, state parks, and resort parks; indeed, most parks seem to be offering no more than an artificial experience of nature. For instance, beaches are often outlined with boundaries that seem to separate human recreation from the uncultivated aquatic world beyond that point. In addition, many ‘nature trails’ consist of glorified sidewalks that coil around the edge of the wilderness; even ‘hiking trials’ through park forests come complete with steps and bridges over the smallest streams and up the smallest inclines. These trails offer a tour of the wilderness but provide few opportunities for visitors to venture off the designated path and truly interact with nature. Consider how often one hears parents telling their children “Don’t touch anything!” on nature walks. I even saw a sign at my local park that ordered visitors to “Please stay off the grass”, which, now that I think about it, reminds me of the “Please do not touch the exhibit” signs at art and natural history museums. Furthermore, if a group of people see a fallen tree across the path or a particularly flooded section of the trail, the individuals tend to turn around and retreat back to their vehicles rather than trying to find a way around the obstacle. Even the animal wildlife is intended to be kept at a safe viewing distance. In contrast, when my sisters and I walked along the creek in-between the ridges on the family farm two weeks ago, we encountered a half-eaten carcass of a large deer directly in our path. It is arguable that the experience of nature is being sugar-coated for the average citizen in America. The last remaining artifacts of the once vast wilderness in America are kept on exhibit at our public parks; however, the purity of this wilderness is tainted by mankind’s inability to function without the comforts of technology in its most basic forms. Ultimately, it seems that the more we succumb to the device paradigm, the more alien the natural world appears to us.