BORN TO BE WILD
DuSable Park Proposal Project Submission

Proposal Summary

DuSable Park should be designated as federally managed wilderness. The park as wilderness would serve as a reminder of the land we have forever changed and a symbol of the land we have tried to protect. Chicago is an ideal urban area in which to make wilderness, as the city has a very particular relationship with nature and public space.

Preface: The Art of Losing (Isn't Hard to Master)

As the daughter of two very civilized Anglophiles, my family made pilgrimages to Great Britain that were exhaustively prepared for, sometimes for years beforehand. We never drove out west to see the Grand Canyon, camp in Yosemite, or visit any of the other monumental, natural American attractions. I've still never been. My camping experience is limited to taking the party outdoors for a weekend; booze and gossip around a campfire instead of a pool table. Nevertheless I long for and seek out stories of the wild and humans venturing into it. I read Laura Ingalls Wilder as a child, and now I enjoy Jon Kraukauer's tales of Everest climbs and other extreme outdoor experience. I ask my friend Billy again and again to tell me about his months on the Appalachian Trail. Wilderness interests me not for its pureness, primitiveness, or promise. At this point I'm not worried about the past, and we forecast a little bit more of the future each day. The present eludes us so far, however.

The last time my family vacationed in the U.K., we rented a car and drove around the Lake District. We traveled on country lanes, lost for much of the time. My sister and I sat in the backseat, me with my headphones on, listening to indie pop from the Pacific Northwest. Eventually we reached a clearly marked scenic overlook. It was hill country, with sculptural bushes and grazing sheep covering pinkish grasses. My father read the plaque and took in the view while my sister stretched her legs. My mom studied the map. I kept the music on and thought about the flight home.

I. Defining Wilderness

Civilization created wilderness.

Roderick Nash, 1967, Wilderness and the American Mind

In this, the year 2001, we Americans live on land that is saturated with us. The human presence is felt everywhere, even in the parts that don't happen to have been visited by people yet. Acid rain falls, the sun shines differently, metal parts fall into the forest from planes passing overhead. Some of us go to nature to get away from city life or work life, and nature is there to receive us. If we can get to a place in the out-of-doors and be somewhat comfortable while there —tents, campstoves, Gore-Tex® help with this—then we go. We go where we want to, or our industries take us to places we've never even heard of. We end up all over.

I propose that DuSable Park be designated wilderness, one of the categories used by the U.S. government to describe its land. (Other categories include national park, national preserve, lakeshore, seashore, and battlefield.)1 The Wilderness Act of 1964 established the National Wilderness Preservation System, "which now includes nearly 100 million acres in 546 areas on national forests, national wildlife refuges, national parks, and Bureau of Land Management lands."2 The act sets forth the following criteria to define wilderness. It is:

• where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain
• undeveloped federal land retaining its primeval character and influence, without permanent improvements or human habitation
• generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man's work substantially unnoticeable
• protected and managed so as to preserve its natural conditions
• has outstanding opportunities for solitude or a primitive and unconfined type of recreation
• which has at least five thousand acres of land or is of sufficient size to make practical its preservation and use in an unimpaired condition
• may also contain ecological, geological, or other features of scientific, education, scenic, or historical value 3

DuSable Park almost certainly would not qualify as wilderness as the above criteria have been applied over the last four decades. The wilderness we've designated thus far is land we consider to be still pure, not land that only relatively recently became land at all or that recently served as a parking lot and storage space for a nearby construction site. DuSable Park qualifies, however, if we acknowledge the relative and symbolic nature of the wilderness concept.

II. Managing Wilderness

Langston Hughes, 1936, "Let America Be America Again"

Once DuSable Park was designated wilderness, the three acres would be under the care of the National Park Service, a federal agency whose purpose is to "manage wilderness areas for the use and enjoyment of the American people in such manner as will leave them unimpaired for future use and enjoyment as wilderness."4 Human access to wilderness is restricted to "primitive means" only. Visitors could enter DuSable Park on foot, on horseback, or by nonmotorized boats.5 Except for wheelchairs, mechanized access would not be permitted. This means no bikes, no rollerblades, no skateboards. There is no indication as to whether baby strollers would be allowed.

Because of DuSable Park's location, there would be a great number of potential visitors everyday. There is high foot traffic at that section of the lakefront; it is quite close to Navy Pier, a popular tourist destination, and other major attractions such as Michigan Avenue, The Art Institute of Chicago, and The Field Museum. There is also a lakefront path used everyday by thousands of runners, bikers, and walkers. All of these people, especially those who are sightseeing, are potential visitors for the wilderness. With the right kind of signage or write-ups in enough guidebooks, DuSable Park could even be a destination in its own right for tourists. (One can only assume that the novelty of a patch of wilderness in the middle of an urban area would rival that of a pier that's not really a pier at all, but a shopping mall like ones found all over the world.)

It would be up to the National Park Service (NPS) as to how it would manage DuSable Park, but it seems fairly certain there would need to be limits on how many visitors could be allowed to enter. Three acres is not very much land when one considers the (at least) hundreds of potential visitors each day. Imagine if even just 100 people per day during the temperate months visited the wilderness park! Covering so small of an area, the land would be seriously affected by that number of people coming onto it. The "imprint" of man would be unavoidable.6

III. Making Wilderness

Ace of Base, 1993, "The Sign"

What is wilderness except something to be saved? Is there worth in wilderness that goes beyond its potential for human rest, recreation, or education? Is there worth inherent in the designation "wilderness" that we could feel as DuSable Park retained its designation even as it became less and less technically wilderness? What is wilderness except something to be created?

DuSable Park's location on Lake Michigan has much potential. Like most major metropolitan areas in America, Chicago's public spaces are of a very particular kind, meant for certain kinds of activity and not others. The lakefront is one of the freer places to be, in that there is not as much architecture and commercial property as there is inland. In fact, the lakefront, with its celebrate skyline view, gives us literal perspective on big business and some of our most grandiose products of engineering, science, and art.

At the lakefront, we are meant to walk, run, swim, and socialize in certain, socially acceptable ways. There are areas where we can cookout, bring our dogs to play with other dogs, and sit on the edge of the water watching the waves. At the lakefront one knows for sure what the public space is intended for; we are taught through popular culture what goes on at the shore, for one, and Chicago's lakeshore is famous for being supremely accessible. Most Chicagoans are consciously proud of this. We are lucky to have the lakefront; most cities do not have an equivalent, at least on the scale of Chicago's.

To restrict access to part of our prized lakefront would be to deny ourselves something we really value: it seems like we are free of so much when we are at the lake. Yet how free are we really? We can't do just anything at the lakefront. Swimmers can swim out only so far before they are whistled back in by lifeguards. The beaches close for the night; police patrol and shoo away late-night visitors. Alcoholic beverages are not allowed as a rule. In other words, our freedom at lakeside is a qualified one, presumably in the name of our own safety and so that the most people possible can get enjoyment out of the area. However, in contrast to most of the other public spaces in the city, and with the lake stretching out as far as you can see, the lakefront is a good place to be. Designating a part of the lakefront to be wilderness would be to restrict or regulate ourselves further in the name of many good things: preserving the land for future generations, showing nature the kind of respect we so often haven't. DuSable Park would be in a sense an extreme example of what the rest of the lakefront is: a place for humans to experience nature untainted by most of the bustle of consumer culture. In the case of DuSable Park, we'd be making public space/nature less accessible and less utilitarian, but still it would be for our own good.

Most of the lakefront land is man-made through landfill. The start of this was after the Chicago Fire of 1871, when burned debris was dumped in the lake.7 The fill of DuSable Park is soil excavated from construction sites. That soil is toxic.8 The "nature" we so treasure at the lakefront is growing on dangerous human refuse. It is the refuse of construction, growth, development. We are pioneers upwards these days. If the lakefront is a case where the city (civilization) literally made nature, can't we make some wilderness, too?

Certainly we have preserved a lot of land since 1964. Even before the Wilderness Act we preserved, or at least realized such a thing was necessary or desirable: as of the 1820s, Americans were voicing their concerns about the dramatic changes occurring in the landscape as a result of pioneering.9 But how many of us actually go into the wilderness we've saved? Almost two-thirds of our wilderness acreage is in Alaska, a state not many of us visit.10 And there are several significant sociological factors that come into play regarding who has access to wilderness, even that in the lower 48.11 What is wilderness, then, but symbolic to most Americans?

I believe we need to create for ourselves some kind of consciousness about wilderness and what it actually represents by bringing it into view. DuSable Park could be considered a kind of representative piece of wilderness, as a tiger in a zoo is looked at as a wild animal even though it most certainly is not wild anymore. Ours is a culture in which representation is considered an acceptable or even preferable way to experience intense of important concepts or emotional states. Memorials, souvenirs, and television are prime examples. Let's make some wilderness for ourselves. Let's bring it into the light. Perhaps it will be a way for us to more comfortably contemplate the wilderness we want but will never see. DuSable Park could be a monument to all the true wilderness we've lost, to the wilderness we never knew, and to the semi-wilderness that remains due to our foresight.

Anna Mayer
June 29, 2001

Thanks to Elizabeth Mayer and Amoreen Armetta

1 National Wilderness Preservation System, "Wilderness Policies," (6 June 2001).
2 Richard M. Warnick, "Facts About the Wilderness Act of 1964," Utah Public Lands, (29 May 2001).
3 U.S, "Statues at Large," 78 (1964): 890-896.
4 National Wilderness Preservation System,
5 Warnick.
6 I suppose the NPS might restrict visitors to one or two per day, or maybe even just four or five per week. Then the park's growth might be able to continue somewhat unhindered, untrammeled. If this were the case, there would need to be some kind of "democratic" system developed for determining who those four or five individuals were. In 1972, when the NPS decided to limit the number of people allowed to travel on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, it used a lottery system for non-commercial boaters, with the majority of the permits set aside for the commercial sector to purchase. Under this system, it was possible that boaters wanting to make the trip on their own could lose out again and again in the lottery, and never be allowed access to the river. (Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (Yale University, 1967.).
7 Henry L. and John R Henderson, "The Chicago Lakefront: Usage and Infrastructure," (18 June 2001).
8 Palmer, Laurie, "Site Description and Context." 3 Acres on the Lake: DuSable Park Proposal Project. (6 June 2001).
9 Lee Clark Mitchell, Witnesses to a Vanishing America: The Nineteenth-Century Response (Princeton University Press: 1981).
10 "Facts About the Wilderness Act of 1964"
11 Nash.

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