Into the Wild: An Exploration of Untamed Environments
Off the coast of California, two miles beneath the ocean surface, geothermal nurseries host tens of thousands of small violet octopuses, each about the size of a grapefruit. These pearl octopuses (Muusoctopus robustus) gather around hydrothermal springs that warm their eggs, enabling them to hatch in less than two years—a process that can take up to ten years in colder waters. Reflecting on these gatherings, a natural factory powered by Earth's energy and hidden from human sight, one wonders how many such undiscovered worlds exist.
The seafloor is just one of many settings in Cal Flyn's captivating book, The Savage Landscape, a personal and profound journey to locate and understand wilderness. This work combines extraordinary physical and narrative movement, taking readers from ocean depths to volcanoes and icebergs, while also delving into human psychology and the stories we tell about "wild" landscapes. Above all, it reminds us that places often perceived as empty or barren are teeming with life, both human and nonhuman.
The Universal Fascination with Wilderness
Flyn highlights that fascination with wilderness transcends cultures. The Sumerian epics can be interpreted as "wilderness quests," featuring exiled heroes navigating remote hinterlands fraught with danger and trials. Similarly, the Toraja people of Indonesia perform an annual ritual where they run into the forest at night to "become one with the wilderness." In this tradition, Flyn represents a contemporary embodiment of this desire. As an avid hill walker, she finds nourishment and solace in wild places. Near the book's conclusion, she recounts retreating to the hills after her father's death, experiencing a "thinning of the skin" and a "sense of communing of all that is non-human."
Many yearning to seek wilderness and its transformative effects, often doubting that prose alone can capture such intensity. Yet, Flyn's writing frequently evokes a sense of wonder. For example, she describes a carcass on the seafloor as a terrestrial feeding site:
"Whale falls simmer with life, like waterholes on the savannah, oases in the desert. Soft cetacean tissues are carved away by sharp-toothed creatures; worms and microbes dissolve the bones; flakes of salted fish drift like snow."
Challenging Notions of Untouched Wilderness
The concept of untouched wilderness is largely a fiction, shaped by human fantasies. Flyn consistently challenges assumptions about purity, wildness, and isolation. At the Monastery of Saint Paul the Anchorite in Egypt's eastern desert, she meets a Coptic monk devoted to isolation and prayer, who nonetheless frequently checks his smartphone. Aboard a cruise ship in the Southern Ocean, she admires icebergs collapsing in "a silent display of staggering sublimity," but also reflects on the debris left by tourists and researchers on Antarctica. According to one research group, only 31% of Antarctica remains "inviolate."
In Transylvania, home to Europe's largest brown bear population, Flyn explores the fraught history of human-wildlife conflict. Bears and wolves thrived in Europe until habitat destruction in the Middle Ages brought them into closer contact with humans. While these animals can be savage, Flyn spares no detail in describing the injuries they inflict on humans. Yet, the most terrifying creature in this chapter is not a bear or wolf but a local sheepdog, whose snarl is described as "a white noise of pure violence."
Rethinking Wilderness and Human Presence
The 1964 US Wilderness Act defines wilderness as a region "untrammelled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain." Flyn reveals this as a harmful misconception. Few places meet this standard, and she details the plight of Indigenous peoples often displaced in the name of conservation or resource extraction. Early in the book, she visits the Yanomami people in the Brazilian rainforest, who were controversially depicted by anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon as "noble savages." The chapter begins like a Victorian adventure but evolves into a critical examination of Chagnon's fantasies and our own. When Flyn's translator negotiates access, the Yanomami request a familiar object: a chainsaw.
Molten Rock: The Last True Wilderness?
Perhaps the only truly unpopulated wilderness is molten rock, which resists settlement. In Iceland, Flyn witnesses a volcanic eruption and vividly describes the lava:
"Rivulets of thickened magma seeped from vents and cracks, as slow and gelatinous as icing from a cake, a grey skin forming, then cracking to reveal a soft, burnt orange underlayer."
She reflects on the sublime, citing the Romantics, but the chapter also evokes Sara Dosa's 2022 documentary about volcanologists Katia and Maurice Krafft, whose passion for volcanoes mirrors Flyn's own. Unlike the Kraffts, who died pursuing their passion, Flyn returns to tell the story, suggesting a complex human yearning for wilderness that borders on a death drive.
Civilised Savagery and Indigenous Wisdom
In 1937, anthropologist Tom Harrisson published Savage Civilisation, about the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), once considered a place of primordial wildness and cannibalism. Harrisson provocatively titled his book to challenge perceptions, viewing missionaries and settlers as the real problem rather than the indigenous practices. Similarly, Flyn's text highlights modern examples of civilised savagery: mining companies exploiting the seafloor, conservation groups displacing locals to "purify" wilderness, and wealthy hunters paying vast sums to kill endangered animals. She invites readers to question:
"Who, she invites us to ask, are the real savages?"
Despite the chainsaws and exploitation, Flyn looks to Indigenous cultures for alternatives to conservationist and technocratic dead ends. In Nepal, she meets the Bon people of Dolpo, who survive in a harsh landscape with limited resources. Their culture eschews wilderness mapping or scientific management, instead venerating deities and spirits inhabiting springs, forests, and boulders, who must not be offended.
Flyn finds inspiration in the Bon, writing:
"Sacred landscapes of the kind found in Dolpo effectively comprise the world’s oldest conservation projects, and there is a lot that we can learn from their longevity."
While it is unclear how the Dolpo's beliefs might apply to the ocean's depths, Flyn's broader point is clear: to avoid ecological destruction, we need more stories like hers that rekindle awe and respect for known and yet undiscovered worlds.
