Both Leopold and Butala saw wilderness and nature as important to the psyche of humans and of humanity in general. Both have had and cherish close relationships with the land. Where they seem to differ most is in how they see this benefit best acquired and appreciated.

Butala grew up in an urban setting and when she moved out into the country with her husband, she experienced what could be called a revelation of sorts. She saw how her husband looked at the world, and how being raised in a rural environment shaped his thinking. She saw that his awareness of the world was different in more than surface manners, that his life long observation of nature had effected his very being.

Then she noticed that living out with nature was beginning to affect her psyche too. She was having more vivid dreams, she saw interrelations that she would never have noticed, and she felt a joy that she had never noticed before. These things have lead her to conclude that humanity needs to start looking at allowing nature to shape itself, not the other way around. She saw how the outdoors affected her and determined that this was the pinnacle of benefit of nature, that more can be derived from nature if you adapt to it, and try not to force it to adapt to you.

Leopold has seen both sides of the coin. He has lived out in nature, but he has also seen the benefits of breaking off from modern life just to observe for a while. He fought to have wilderness preserved in its pristine state, but also argues that the wilds can benefit from human influence. The film gave a good example of his attitude thus, when he bought the worn out old farm, and re-seeded it, and brought it back to a more natural condition. Leopold saw in man’s interaction with nature something vital, as long as it involved personal growth. He did not disparage the hunters, he merely said that the desire to have physical trophies was one stage in personal growth. He said that unless they never got any further than that early stage of personal development, there was nothing wrong with the wish to have physical trophies. He did say that people who want to be out in nature, but in the least inconvenient way possible, were not getting anything out of it. "And now, to cap the pyramid of banalities, the trailer." He said that there should be various levels of development of nature, that everyone should be able to chose for himself what he wanted to get out of it.

Leopold did something in "Conservation Esthetic" that I found interesting. He took various ways of experiencing nature and analyzed them in a pseudo-economic manner. He weighed the pros and cons, renewabilty, the affect of how much use an aspect of nature changed its value, and over all usefulness of several uses of nature. He did not say that photographing rare species was morally better than hunting large game, just that it made more sense to the whole of humanity, that the enjoyment of fishing stocked rivers and lakes was less than that of searching with binoculars for one rare bird.

These were all in the context of mass use, something that he did not seem to be opposed to on general principles. On the other hand, he advocated general use of natural resources for a sense of freedom, as long as the user made sure to look and appreciate, to grow in their individual perception of the land.

Both Butala and Leopold advocated being in nature. Being in nature is important when you are trying to develop an ethic based on conservation, because if you haven’t experienced nature then you have no connection with it, and without that connection it is difficult to rationalize the value of conserving wilderness. If you are trying to acquire an ethic based on conservation, as opposed to developing your own, then to not experience nature first hand means that you have no realization of why you are fighting for your cause. All you are then is a follower, someone who is joining a bandwagon just because it is "cool." This seems to me to be wrong. In this at least, I think Kant might have been right, the motives behind activism are as important if not more so than the results, at least on a spiritual level.

There are several reasons that people can have for not accepting a conservation-based ethic. Some people, while having experienced nature, fail to see what good it does; they are the people Leopold was pointing at, the ones who gain no deeper perception from their experiences. Another group that is justified in not caring is those who have never experienced nature before. Without having experienced nature, you have no solid tangible reason for wanting to conserve it. You do not miss that which you have never had.

Progress and wilderness are not mutually exclusive. Wilderness is important, as is progress. If we want to progress in the manner that we have been, that does not mean that we have to sacrifice the wilderness, nor does protecting the wilderness mean a stop to progress. One could even look at preserving wilderness as a type of progress. I also think that wilderness need not only encompass the pristine, the untouched, that we should expand our views of wilderness. I am in favor of leaving areas inaccessible, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t provide way stations and other constructed things, increasing the safety of the people who would enter the wilderness. Progress should include finding ways of reusing areas that we have used before, reseeding areas we have cut, perhaps even sacrificing a little industrial growth to allow us to have sustainable growth, and maybe, just maybe deciding that we do not need to use quite as much, nor have quite as many people. Progress needs to include ways of making sure that tomorrow comes, that today is not as good as it is going to get, and that we never accept the status quo at face value.