Caroline Fraser, "Rewilding North America"

One key to Caroline Fraser’s work is the problem of isolation, not only in our lives as individuals but also as a society. Born into a family of Christian Scientists, she was taught that matter is illusory: the world in its true form is purely spiritual and subject to the power of faith through prayer, which can work miracles if we just believe. As she grew older, however, and encountered different ways of seeing the world, Fraser began to distance herself from the religion of her parents. With a B.A.from UCLA, she went on to earn Harvard Ph.D. in English and American Literature. Then she began a successful career as a poet, journalist and free-lance writer.
Education and experience both helped Fraser overcome the isolation of her childhood, but the two books she has published so far might both be read as profound accounts of isolation in American life. God’s Perfect Child, her first book, explores the liabilities of Christian Science, which places enormous emphasis on spiritual self-reliance. Because it equates disease with a lack of faith, conventional medical treatment is discouraged—an outlook that has led, in several celebrated cases, to the deaths of innocent children. Beyond its function as an exposé, God’s Perfect Child calls attention to the ways that our beliefs can isolate us, not only from those we love the most, but even from the needs of our own bodies.

At first glance Fraser’s second book, Rewilding the World, might seem far removed from the first. But here again isolation is a key theme. The isolation she describes this time around is a matter of geography—the confinement of unspoiled nature to “island communities” in parks and reserves, where many species simply fade away for lack of a large enough habitat. Unless we can transform our way of life, and rather quickly at that, we will see the greatest mass extinction since the disappearance of the dinosaurs, a development that could potentially put mankind on the road to extinction as well. The solution that some biologists propose is greater connectivity: the building of corridors to create a wilderness network within the heart of what we call “civilization.” But as Fraser suggests, geography is not our greatest obstacle: instead it is our standard ways of thinking. The most important corridor we need to create might indeed be one “in people’s minds.”

Fraser, Caroline. Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009), 17-42. Biographical information drawn from http://carolinefraser.net/.

Links to Explore:

carolinefraser.net: Fraser's personal web site

iWild: Fraser's environmental blog.

Treehugger Radio: a podcast interview with Caroline Fraser

@iWild: follow iWild on Twitter.

Questions for Connecting:

• In "Selections from Into the Wild," Jon Krakauer tells us that Chris McCandless "went into the wilderness not primarily to ponder nature or the world at large but, rather, to explore the inner country of his own soul." By leaving behind his home and family, McCandless hoped to see what he could do without the support of civilization. But now, as the human population expands and true wilderness becomes more and more remote, we might ask if such an undertaking has become a thing of the past. Is it even possible nowadays to leave civilization behind? (Think about McCandless's books and tools, and his dependence on the bus.) What might rewilding teach us about the "inner country" of our "souls"? If the wilderness is gone, might we in some way still "rewild" ourselves-reconnecting in a new way with the natural world?

• In "The Myth of the Ant Queen," Steven Johnson makes an argument about the power of what he calls "self organization." Beginning with a community of ants, he points to the sophistication of their colonies and argues that they did it all without the benefit of any central leader or prearranged plan. From ants he turns to the British city of Manchester, which rose to prominence over several centuries with "no local government to speak of." It was, he writes, "the least planned and most chaotic of cities in the six-thousand year history of urban settlements," and yet it also seemed to possess a "kind of order" that was "wonderful." Ultimately Johnson appears to believe that the best order will arise spontaneously, without any conscious effort or control. Would you say that Fraser confirms Johnson's view? Does the complexity of modern life require less planning, as Johnson suggests, or does it demand much, much more, as Fraser implies?

Explore some more:

Search for other links using Google: