“An American Indian Wilderness” by Louis Owens Essay

In Louis Owens essay An American Indian Wilderness the author projects a self-reflective and, in the end, pessimistic persona. As a young man Owens works as a park fire warden in the American Wilderness of Washington State. He has the task of destroy down an old log shelter in the wilderness, to return the skirt area back to its natural state. After completing his task, he meets cardinal elderly Indian women, who tell him that their stick had built the shelter in the previous century. He suddenly feels ashamed about what he had honorable done however, the two women forgive him and he starts to understand the Indian philosophy in regards to Mother Nature and his own detachment with it.In the introductory half of the story, Owen recalls that he felt good and smug about the agate line he had just completed, because he was returning the wilderness to its original state. He writes that it was a task he heartily approved of. His feelings change after(prenominal) he meets the two elderly Indian women, as he learns that their father had also been a park ranger, as wellhead as a descendant from the original Indian inhabitants of the Indian country he is workings in. The two women seem ancient to him, probably wise as well and one with nature. They still know about the relationship that charitables employ to have with nature, before the Europeans introduced the wilderness to America.As Owens odour turns darker, he realizes that he too had succumbed to a 500 year old pattern of poisonous thinking that separates us humans from the natural world. He realizes that the term wilderness is an absurdness and that there really had been no wilderness before the Europeans came to the land. The upbeat tone from the beginning of the text turns into a self-reflective analysis, which ultimately turns into pessimism about the future of the human civilization. As the mood of the story turns, the whitesnow turns into a go rain he mentions that he understands painfully wh at the Indian inhabitants always knew that we as humans are part of nature, but that we are not animation that way anymore.Owens persona becomes most pessimistic at the end of the text, when he writes, Unless all human beings can learn to imagine themselves intimately and inextricably related to ever aspect of the world they inhabit, the earth entrust only if not survive. He seems disillusioned about the chance we humans have, if we obtain fencing in Mother Nature and turn her into a recreational aspect of our lives, rather than being part of the whole, as the original Indians utilize to be.We as humans should take this very seriously and stop ourselves from expanding our American Wilderness farther and farther, pushing nature more and more past from us. Owens as the Lone Ranger understands the intricate balance between us and nature and that at some point The Great Mother will either fight back or die forever.