The Need for Wilderness? (3/3)

In wilderness we find ourselves (Part 1) and recover our sense of community (Part 2), to care for our Planet and all the life in it.

There is a third thing wilderness gives back to us, and it may be the one we need most today: the will to act, and the knowledge of how.

Walk into a forest after a storm and look closely. A fallen tree is already turning into soil. Fungi and beetles work inside the bark, moss covers what was broken, and in the gap of light the old tree left, young plants race toward the sun. Nobody planned it, and nobody is in charge. Life is doing what it always does, making room for more life.

COVID was a great example of this. As the world slowed down, nature woke up and showed us its capacity to restore vitality in all its systems. The only thing it needed was the space, the silence, to activate its regenerative capacity. I saw this happen in my city, and I also saw it happen in nature, where humans had been pressing insistently. Deer and foxes started to appear on paved roads; even in Bogotá, we saw foxes coming down from the mountains into the city, the awakening of the wildness around us.

Then the world sped up again, and what reaches us, mostly through our screens, is the opposite story. We have now crossed seven of the nine planetary boundaries, the limits that keep the Earth a safe place for humanity; ocean acidification was the latest, in 2025 (Planetary Health Check 2026). The news arrives every day, and with it a quiet question many of us carry: What can I possibly do?

I feel this question is where many of us get stuck. The problems are so large, and our lives so small next to them, that we either look away or fall into despair. Both leave the Planet exactly where it was.

Wilderness answers the question in its own way. In nature, nothing repairs the whole system at once. Each fungus, each root, each bird carrying a seed in its belly does its small part, and the forest comes back. Regeneration is not a place we will arrive at one day. It is a direction we choose to move in, every day, together with everything that lives around us.

Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone say the same about hope:

“Active Hope is a practice. Like tai chi or gardening, it is something we do rather than have.” Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, Active Hope (2012)

Caring for our Planet is that kind of practice. It starts with the relationships we explored in the first two parts, with ourselves and with others, and it widens to the whole Earth community. For a long time, we have lived from nature, taking what we needed and much more. Wilderness invites us to live in nature, with nature, for nature, in its service, and finally to remember that we are nature.

That last step matters most. In Part 1, I wrote about reclaiming our role as stewards of the Planet. A steward still stands a little apart from what they look after. In the wilderness, that distance disappears. When we restore a stream, protect a forest, or bring life back to the soil that grows our food, we are nature caring for itself. Caring for our environment is caring for ourselves.

This is also why action that grows from connection lasts longer than action that grows from fear or anger. Pushing against things wears us out and creates more resistance. Acting from love for a place, a river, a mountain, a neighborhood, gives us the energy to keep going for years.

So where do we begin? Where we are. We can give ourselves a space of silence each day, to connect deeply and to awaken our capacity to bring vitality to everything around us. Get to know the water, the soil, the birds, and the trees of the place we live. Spend time in the wilderness, alone and with the people we love, and bring our children along. Choose food that gives life back to the land. Join the people who are already restoring something nearby. None of this will heal the Planet alone, and none of it has to. Like the forest, we move together.

We need wilderness to learn again how to care for our Planet, and to find the courage to act.

Luis Camargo is the Founder and Director of OpEPA.