In his engaging book Windshield Wilderness, David Louter explores the
relationship between automobiles and national parks, and how together
they have shaped our ideas of wilderness. National parks, he argues, did
not develop as places set aside from the modern world, but rather came
to be known and appreciated through technological progress in the form
of cars and roads, leaving an enduring legacy of knowing nature through
machines.
With a lively style and striking illustrations, Louter traces the
history of Washington State's national parks -- Mount Rainier, Olympic,
and North Cascades -- to illustrate shifting ideas of wilderness as
scenic, as roadless, and as ecological reserve. He reminds us that we
cannot understand national parks without recognizing that cars have been
central to how people experience and interpret their meaning, and
especially how they perceive them as wild places.
Windshield Wilderness explores what few histories of national parks
address: what it means to view parks from the road and through a
windshield. Building upon recent interpretations of wilderness as a
cultural construct rather than as a pure state of nature, the story of
autos in parks presents the preservation of wilderness as a dynamic and
nuanced process.Windshield Wilderness illuminates the difficulty of
separating human-modified landscapes from natural ones, encouraging us
to recognize our connections with nature in national parks.