In 1995, environmental historian William Cronon published “The Trouble With Wilderness; or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.” In it, he critiques the Western concept of “wilderness” as nothing but a fantasy that prevents us from meaningfully engaging with ecological systems. He argues that the idea of wilderness is beset by a central paradox: It supplies the “ultimate landscape of authenticity,” allowing for the purest expression of a human self, and yet it excludes human presence by definition (wilderness is wherever other humans are not). Wilderness thus remains a “profoundly human creation” — charged with individualism — in which we perceive not “nature,” but “the reflection of our own unexamined longings and desires.”