Elderly people and those professionally connected with nature tended to consider the landscape of the period when cultivation was intensive as the norm. This preference for the past is not only motivated by considerations of usefulness, but more importantly by reverence and respect for the human effort made by previous generations. It is this aspect that made these interviewees keen to preserve the previous state and to reject secondary wilderness.
No. 8: “…I think it is a disgrace, really, that we should let all this forest, which has been tended for decades or almost centuries and used sensibly, simply to go back to nature. I don’t plan to ever get to like this idea.”
Freedom from regulations
Several interviewees mentioned that the absence of regulations and duties when they were out in the wild made them predisposed to favour wilderness areas. Most of them were against having rules and regulations restricting behaviour in wilderness areas.
No. 1: “…With large agglomerations I think it is especially important for the people who live there to have access to areas and be able to find such areas and enjoy themselves there with as little management as possible…”
