I suspect that a MAJOR essence of the 21st century recreational wilderness is as a death encounter, like Disneyland.
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Do you mean human? Or any large enough charismatic mammal?
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even plant death is on display - but I think the (safe, pretend) encounter with one's own death is really important
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people are obsessed with "wilderness survival" and there's a trend of focus on allegedly spooky wilderness deaths even though most wilderness deaths are car accidents, heart attack, etc.
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suicide is another common cause of death in US national parks - basically everything EXCEPT exposure/animal attack
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This makes total sense. It is the natural place in some ways. In traditional Indian life-stage script, the 3rd stage is "vanaprastha" (give up worldly life and go live in forest). The last stage, "sanyas" (renunciation) often implied voluntary ascetic death while in the forest.
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In practical terms this makes absolutely no sense, since in the last stage (traditionally ages 75-100) you'd likely be in poor health and the best place for you would be heart of civilization where you could be cared for. I sometimes wonder how it actually worked in practice.
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Read somewhere that samurai ritual seppuku was more in theory than practice, since someone would be there to cut off your head in one stroke before you could feel the pain of self-disembowelment. I wonder if all ritual suicide cultures have such a gap between theory and practice.
If sanyas was ever practiced in the theoretical form, I suspect the elderly probably only nominally lived in the forest but younger relatives probably checked up on them and came to comfort/palliate in actual deathbed time
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