Award-winning broadcaster and natural historian David Attenborough and longtime collaborator Colin Butfield present a powerful call to action focused on our planet’s oceans…
— book blurb on Amazon,com
Last month, a new book appeared on the Amazon website (and maybe in bookstores as well?)
Ocean: Earth’s Last Wilderness by David Attenborough and Colin Butfield.
It has received 26 customer reviews so far, and has earned 5 stars. Very few new books receive 5 stars on Amazon, because — let’s face it — most new books are garbage.
Of course, it’s possible those 26 customers are David Attenborough’s friends, so we should take that into account.
If you are British, you are likely aware that David Attenborough is actually “Sir David Attenborough”.
Colin Butfield is just plain old “Colin Butfield”. But he obviously has important friends.
I haven’t read this book. I prefer to write about books that I haven’t read, because then I can say pretty much anything that relates even vaguely to the book’s title. This is known as “artistic license” and makes me feel like an artist.
In this case, I was attracted by the word “Wilderness”.
I am often attracted to words that seem inappropriate in their particular context.
When I looked up synonyms for the word “wilderness” I got this list:
Synonyms:
outdoors, the wild, the open air, the open, back country, woods, forest, jungle, wasteland, wastes, outback, open space, boondocks, middle of nowhere, landscape, desolate landscape, uninhabited region, uninhabited area, unpopulated area, rural area
In my humble opinion — and as my readers know, my opinion is often humble — none of these words applies to an ocean. The word “wilderness” implies a geographic area of land that is currently uninhabited by humans… but which will hopefully be inhabited and cultivated at some point in the future, once we can get rid of the indigenous inhabitants.
Sure, the ocean is “uninhabited” and “unpopulated” in a certain sense, because humans don’t live in the ocean. If humans lived in the ocean, believe you me, the ocean would already be inhabited and well on its way to becoming unaffordable.
We have actual wilderness here in Colorado, thanks in part to Lyndon Johnson. When he signed The Wilderness Act of 1964, he spoke about gratitude and contempt.
“If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it.”
By some estimates, we are nearly through with it. But we still have a few areas of wilderness left.
According to the U.S. Forest Service, the National Wilderness Preservation System is a network of over 100 million acres of public land – more area than the state of California. Thus relieving us all from the need to visit California.
Our National Wilderness is comprised of more than 803 wilderness areas administered for the American people by the federal government. We will note that none of them are in the ocean.
Once upon a time, a wilderness was something to be conquered and tamed. Back then, the whole point of wilderness was to cut down the trees and exterminate the animals, and start growing crops that could be subsidized by the Farm Bill.
But in 1964, “wilderness” became something totally different. It became a cherished inheritance that we wanted to leave to our grandchildren and great grandchildren, unless we are Republicans or stockholders in an oil company.
Sir David Attenborough will be 100 years old next year, so I certainly don’t want anyone to think I am belittling his effort, at that advanced age, to publish a book.
In fact, he also released a new movie last month, entitled, Ocean. The film was released on his 99th birthday, May 8, which is the same day the book was released.
That’s a rather remarkable coincidence, I would say, to release a movie and a book on the same day, both with the same word — Ocean — in their titles.
And on his birthday, too.
Talk about happy coincidences!
Makes me want to live to be 99 and see if the same kind of coincidences can happen to me.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.