Attuning to wild atmospheres: Reflections on wildness as feeling

Abstract

Drawing from our fieldwork conducted at three Canadian parks inscribed as Natural on the UNESCO World Heritage list (Kluane National Park, Dinosaur Provincial Park, and Wood Buffalo National Park) this paper describes wildness as an atmosphere. Through three ethnographic vignettes we paint a picture of wildness as a kind of ephemeral and uncontrollable event that can be felt and sensed, something that can be affected by a more-than-human life and something that can affect a more-than human life. Rather than thinking of wildness as a concept marked by absence—the absence of people, the absence of development, the absence of human history and society—we describe wildness as a presence. In doing so we re-envision wildness as the expression of the vitality of the sacred: a vitalist, life-giving energy that transcends human nature, a vitalist energy worthy of respect and honour. As ethnographic moments highlight, at times these vital energies are present and obvious, but at other times they are mere possibilities, speculations, implications, gestures suspended between presence and absence, vital forces of natures acting almost in excess of human comprehension and demanding careful attunement.