Henry David Thoreau’s writings on self-sufficient living is a perfect analogy for America’s early beginnings. Never mind the not-so-secrets that Thoreau was on the land of his wealthy neighbor and his mother did his laundry; he was living the rugged frontier American boy dream, dammit.
The analogy I am referring to is America’s beginnings and dependency on the back-breaking free labor provided by women. The horrendous slave trade. Immigrant labor that makes infrastructure possible. The convenient clearing of the already here Indigenous peoples through European disease and genocide. All of which makes Thoreau’s imaginative American original nature boy narrative of rugged self-sufficiency magically constructed by bootstrapping on the frontier laughable.
Such literary frontier myths have permeated the psyche of cycling narratives and media that it doesn’t allow for adequate self-reflection or analysis unless on some soul-searching enlightenment journey. And even so today, the individual setting out to the frontier and removing the self from collective traumas or responsibilities continues to be a common theme from films, documentaries, books, history, and magazines. And whether we believe in these narratives or not, we must remember that striving and surviving is not a testament to rugged individualism but our interdependence on each other.
No man is an island, but rugged individualism will have you thinking so because its ideal is rooted in the cultural legacy of Manifest Destiny and the settlement of the West. Greg Grandin shares in his book, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America, the word “frontier came to suggest a cultural zone or a civilizational struggle, a way of life: a semantic change electrified by the terror and bloodshed that went along with settler expansion.” That, “What we think of as the West, since its inception, has been the domain of large-scale power, of highly capitalized speculators, businesses, railroads, agricultural, and mining.” In essence, nation-building wasn’t a bunch of rugged individuals discovering and settling alone; it came with the support of U.S. military and treasury handouts.
The mythos of rugged individualism is infused in American culture and politics. In culture, rugged individualism is materialized in the form of the solo adventurer: “The Lone Ranger” – think of cowboys of the westerns and the strapping Marlboro Man of cigarette advertising campaigns — an archetype that the Economist described as epitomizing “resilience, self-sufficiency, independence, and free enterprise.” Politically, it is the coining of the term “rugged individualism” in a 1928 campaign speech by Herbert Hoover that described a choice between “rugged individualism” and European philosophy of… paternalism and state socialism. This belief that individuals can succeed on their own with little to no government help continued to be echoed in neoliberal policies decades later by presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump.
The issue with these ideologies is that they center and glorify white cishet men who are vain, exploitive, and privileged like Thoreau. Where self-reliance and freedom are espoused, there is no recognition of the privilege and power that comes with whiteness to move freely from place to place without concern for physical safety, freedom not granted to Indigenous and non-white people. Freedom that comes at the expense of Indigenous communities who still face violent barriers accessing their homelands and exercising their sovereignty.
From media to politics, the consumption of the myth of the rugged individual is now consuming us and the planet. We are seeing rugged individualism play out in the coronavirus pandemic. By a lack of regard for the worth and value of others by those who cling to their individual rights and view vaccines and restrictions as unnecessary and unacceptable. An infringement on rights and freedoms, which they are not willing to sacrifice to protect themselves or others. The result has been a total of 77,439,456 cases and 915,651 deaths in the United States and counting.
The rising tide of rugged individualism will sink all of us. And we can’t buy reusable straws, drive electric vehicles, or gear swap our way out of it. Take into account the environmental impacts of resource consumption and extraction linked to the outdoors. The rising amount of tourism for iconic Instagram shots in parks is creating a crisis of overcrowding, traffic congestion, polluting, sacred site desecration, and burdening resources for parks, according to The Guardian article, Crisis in our national parks: how tourists are loving nature to death.
Let’s also take into account other implications of doing a bikepacking ride like the Tour Divide. Where starting at a non walled Canadian border is a stark contrast in an ending where there is political violence and an environmental crises of a wall on the Mexican border. For many people who’s families are torn apart, where sacred sites are violently demolished, and animal migration is detrimentally impacted, it’s eerie and triggering to see smiling faces posing with their bikes at violent institutions of American nationalism.
Much like the book of Lands Of Lost Borders, where Kate Harris goes on a self-discovery bikepacking trip through war torn countries along the Silk Road. The narrative rings frontier of the self more than an exploration of the geographic, ecological or geo-political issues that she seems to like having an opinion on without input of the locals. There are many examples like Kate’s I see in bikepacking, like the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, where oil pipelines have disrupted traditional ways of life, caribou migration, and damaged the environment. To me, these are narratives that glorify the impacts of colonialism and the privileges it allows settlers to treat violently impacted lands like their playgrounds and locals like invisible characters for their self discovery and clout.
There is no ethical way to consume the outdoors under settler colonialism and extraction. Nor is there an ethical way to reflect in some soul-searching journey until we stop with willful ignorance and look at the fact that internalizing rugged individualism is toxic. It is time for the outdoor community to recognize and dissect the various structures of oppression that exist to benefit their experiences of finding “liberation” or “enlightenment” on Stolen Land.
It’s time we develop new ways of representing ourselves out of rugged individualism that necessitates our assimilation into a hegemonic culture under white supremacy and patriarchy. A radical change in how we express ourselves through the colonial gaze and internalize respectability politics will be our only hope of liberating ourselves and The Land. And how we use erasure language to talk about the outdoors and our relationship to The Land must match with action and belief systems.
BIPOC artists, writers, poets, photographers, and activists have understood how essential it is to question our representation in images and storytelling and move towards decolonizing the canon by disrupting the colonial gaze in media.
We do this by celebrating oral traditions of education by storytelling. Centering our joy as opposed to our pain. We embrace culture, languages, and bodies that The Land has given us and does not judge. We seek consent and offer gifts and thanks before we receive the medicines and gifts of the Land. We pick up our trash. We support the local community. We learn about the history of the places we go. Learn how to act and be part of the local community rather than expect it to change for our comfort. We invite community into the narrative by relating our deepest fears and moments of revelation. We see living beings of the Land as relatives instead of invisible characters of our stories. We respect sacred sites by not treating them like our playgrounds. These ways of being and knowing on the land are essential to creating a new narrative.
So this is my call to reckon with the impacts of frontier extremism and embrace a more radicalized narrative, one in which we are more attentive to the impacts of how our privileges take up space and the language we use when recreating and finding liberation on Stolen Land. Ultimately, we must rid ourselves of rugged individualism to formulate outdoor decolonized narratives that speak to reciprocal relationships fostered through stewardship and the simple act of being a good relative on the Land.
Image via: WTB