Understanding a “Comfortable Wilderness” At National Park sites
such as Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, can we accept
cultural landscapes as part of nature? By Frank Edgerton Martin
When Americans think of national parks, they often envision
sublime valleys, geysers, and mountain peaks. But in nearly all
states and federal territories, the National Park Service (NPS)
manages and interprets landscapes where human presence is part
of the story. Such a landscape is Sleeping Bear Dunes National
Lakeshore on North Manitou Island, 11 miles off Lake Michigan’s
eastern shore. Here, the harsh conditions of Great Lakes weather
and lake effects were tamed, through the century-long
cultivation of orchards and the legacy of the genteel culture of
summer cottage tourism, to create a “comfortable” wilderness.
The term “cultural landscape” was first defined in the 1920s by
geographer Carl Sauer, who saw the natural landscape as a medium
for the inevitable transformations of human settlement. Sleeping
Bear Dunes had a