Nature has been a fundamental feature of American culture since the European “discovery” of a new-world Eden. This embrace of wilderness or the “great outdoors” permeates the elevation of the pastoral ideal over the city, the celebration of the frontier and the centrality of this concept in art, architecture, literature and mass media. Yet, like other constructs of contemporary American culture, nature as a place, a set of dynamic forces and a congerie of salient features—green space, animals, even disease— has also been shaped by issues of control and independence, consumption and representation.

Nature, as a symbol of American independence, for example, has been owned and shaped for decades: American historical narratives continually stress this conquest of the wilderness in the inevitable advance of manifest destiny (at the expense of American Indians, often identified with nature in popular representation). State and national parks, forests and reserves preserve some space, especially in the West, as public domains. Yet others have appropriated nature through giant ranches and estates as well as smaller suburban landscapes. Within both public and private domains, questions of use also confront independence: whether logging or mineral extraction, for example, supersedes public appreciation or whether private owners have unlimited use of water, beachfront, land or other resources. These debates also have raised issues of access—not only via automobiles, highways, tourism and hotels in national parks—but also over rights to drive sports utility vehicles, motorcycles, snowmobiles or mountain bikes into pristine areas in order to be one with nature, albeit en masse. Similar issues have erupted concerning ownership, display and scientific use of animals, whether in the wild, on ranches, in zoos or as pets, confronting those who espouse animal rights.

Nature has also become a theme in consumption, both directly—in these issues of access and ownership—and indirectly. Sales of vehicles, clothing and gear make nature a major industry; chains like Eddie Bauer, L.L. Bean and Timber-land specialize in rugged clothing that may never see the wilderness. Nature may imply simplicity and antitechnology in food, fashion, or housing, yet it has also become associated with high-tech items and designs for climbing, hiking, cooking, sleeping and computing in the outdoors.

Such consumption also varies with the life cycle and with class access to resources as well as ethnic differences. Hence, summer camps and family vacations give way to more rugged sports and eco-tourism for many. Home sites and retirement communities in the Sunbelt that sell sun, water and landscape to older citizens as passive consumers differentiate citizens in rights to wilderness as do consumption issues.

Nature is also fundamental to American self-representation. Genres like the western (in literature, film and television), the Southern, road movies, horror, science fiction and disaster movies draw on various features of land, climate and animal life within their plots. American art and architecture, from the American Light of the Hudson River School or the parks of Frederick Law Olmsted in the nineteenth century to the paintings of Georgia O’Keefe, the California homes of Richard Neutra or fashions like Southwestern style, have all incorporated domination and reconstruction of nature into American character. Emblematic figures like the cowboy permeate advertising as well.

Yet the paradox of nature outside of and more powerful than mankind, but also tamed and owned by America and Americans, continues to trouble environmental policy and planning for the future.