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What means Wilderness to you?

A few days ago my friend Patricio Robles Gil asked me to write a few sentences about what wilderness means to me. I was based in Kotzebue at the time doing aerial work to document America`s Western Arctic. It is a huge wilderness area that not very many people know about – but let me get to that in another post……

Between the shoots and the editing I sat down and asked myself that very simple question. Coming up with an answer in a few sentences was not that easy. After-all Wilderness is the reason, why I became a nature photographer. Wilderness is the reason why I wanted to be an exchange student and come to America as a teenager. With over eighty million people in a country smaller than the state of Montana, there is little room for wilderness. As wilderness had disappeared in Germany, I longed to explore it in the American continent. The word wilderness envelops so many promises, feelings, memories and emotions for me, that is hard to define. But here is what I came up with:

WILDERNESS

“………… is a place, where my imagination can wonder into a world not dominated by mankind, where my eyes can rest over virgin landscapes and where wildlife has the freedom to roam. True wilderness is a window into an ancient world in balance. It serves as a reminder, that we humans are only one single species in this incredible web of life. Nowhere else but in wilderness do I feel more alive!”

— Florian Schulz