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“Wilderness” Was Invented Without Indigenous Peoples
- h2odragon 5y agoWhen Europeons first recorded their impressions of my part of TN, they noted it was "almost treeless". This area is sub-tropical jungle and 20 years is sufficient for the forest to reclaim cleared land. I have never heard of a proposal to "return the land to its natural state" around here that included the vast fires and labor needed to deforest this part of the state. Pestilent swamps, dense thickets of fresh forest, packs of coyotes (and the occasional werewolf); all those things that define this land to its residents for the last two centuries are all new here. Before that it was apparently tended pastureland for perhaps millennia.