Hi, thanks for such an extensive and interesting text. At great risk of sounding like a new-age hippy, hereās my own take on what wildness is.
Itās not something āout thereā, itās in everything, including us. In a way, there is no zone 5, because itās all zone 5. Itās either sick or healthy. We mostly make it sick. Permaculture can be used to learn how to keep it healthy while getting what we need to survive from it.
For sure, it can also be used to bolster arrogant peopleās mistaken ideas about the universe and our place in it. It seems to me thatās the predominant use at the moment.
In a way, also, itās true that thereās no āwildernessā left in Europe, except perhaps that bit in Poland, but thatās hardly surprising because we made up the word to specifically exclude any human intervention. We set ourselves up to remain in a language trap of our own making.
I tend to use āwildernessā as synonymous with āa wild placeā. I guess Iām wrong, technically, but itās hard to write or think of the concepts rationally when the only word we have is a thought-trap. āThe Wildā might be a better term. I think "wilderness is not much use in the lexicon of rewilders, because all we can do is leave a place alone, and if every inch of where we are has already been tampered with, itās āimpureā already and thus, as some authors imply, there is no hope.
I think that realizing the true nature of wildness, and implementing that into our philosophies, can help remove the hurdles imposed by the ideas behind āwildernessā. There is no way to separate us from the wilderness, except by dying out. Wildness exists wherever humans exist, and anything else (i.e. separate from) is only a figment of our civilized imaginations.
Thinking this way leads to intelligent manipulation, just like every other species manipulates its habitat to make it a more conducive environment. Our unintelligent manipulations make it sick, but just like a slave is still a human, domesticated wildlife is still wild. Wheat may be domesticated and sick, yet if we left it alone over some generations it would become strong and healthy again. I may be forced to do certain things against my will, but that doesnāt mean I have no will. I am still wild. I am āself-willedā.
Our language deeply affects our thinking, so we need to throw off the bad thinking caused by limitations imposed by language. Zone 5 is wild, not interfered with by us, and we do that in order to learn from it what our place is in it. We donāt need a piece of pristine land never interfered with by humans, all we need to to stop interfering with a patch and observe what happens there. Then we can compare it to our observations of interfered with areas in order to see what we are doing wrong.
Perhaps itās necessary to live somewhere where there is no wilderness before you can see that wildness is everywhere. Words like wilderness obscure the truth because they were defined by people who saw themselves as separate from the rest of life. We donāt need to work to bring back wildness, any more than we would need to work to bring humanity back to a slave. All we need to is to release our slaves from their bondage.
Gradually, one side of my garden has become almost completely wild, and the other is on the way. Each year I need to do less and less, yet still it has things I can eat. Itās a learning process.
The universe is āone changeā. Don;t listen to people who believe you have to go back to some previous time (which is impossible). We made a big change, and wildness will adapt to that, just like any other. Even if Fukushima turns out to be an extinction level event, or some other human stupidity does, itās unlikely to make earth Mars-like. Something else will happen, like with the previous ELEs and wildness will continue, with or without us. Itās arrogant to believe that humans could destroy wildness.