Brautigan and Brechin Agree: True Wilderness is Extinct

Richard Brautigan commented on the devastation created by imperial, capitalistic societies in his novel Trout Fishing in America more than three decades before Gary Brechin illustrated in detail the demise of what he defines as the Pacific Basin in his social critique Imperial San Francisco. Brechin claims in his introduction, "No area on the planet is now free from the process of global urbanization. Wilderness has ceased to exist" (Brechin xxii). Brautigan also presented the lack of a pristine, majestic wilderness, along side a nostalgic yearning for such a space. In his "Worsewick" chapter, Brautigan describes what should be a majestic family get-away--a hot spring--but this nature site is instead spoiled and possibly toxic, "There was a green slime growing around the edges of the tub and there were dozens of dead fish floating in our bath...The green slime and the dead fish played and relaxed with us and flowed out overs us and entwined themselves about us" (Brautigan 43). The unease and discomfort created by the lack of serene escape aid Brautigan in conveying disgust with the current state of nature--created by the powers that be among men: money and desire.
Brechin states that "as early as 1855, the Yuba, Feather, and American River canyons had begun vomiting torrents of mud and gravel into the Sacramento Valley" (Brechin 48). Also commenting on the Californian viewpoints which lead to such disaster, "Gut and get out: that was 'the true California spirit' brought with and proudly nourished by the Argonauts [the forty-niner miners] Western landscapes had aged with uncanny speed, but few Californians noticed as they drew upon posterity's legacy to create their fortunes" (Brechin 64). The desire for capital at all costs through mining, real estate, or any other forms of investment possessed the powerful elite of San Francisco, according to Brechin, and this desire (and distance from the devastating ecological results) granted these looters of the earth the only justification which they needed--capital.
Furthermore in "The Cleveland Wrecking Yard" chapter, Brautigan conveys the extent to which man has come to treat nature unnaturally. Upon discovering a trout stream for sale, the narrator asks for more information regarding this peculiar item, the salesman replies:
We're selling it by the foot length. You can buy as little as you want or you can buy all we've got left...We're selling the waterfalls separately of course, and the trees and birds, flowers, grass and ferns we're also selling extra. The insects we're giving away free with a minimum purchase of ten feet of stream. (Brautigan 104)
This also echoes California's desire to "gut and get out" in the wrecking yards attempt to gain capital from something which should be valued so immensely (in it's natural environment) as to be priceless rather than partitioned into various sale items. Moreover, water should not be a privately sold and exploited item as it has been proven time and time again to be a vital natural resource. Brechin resonates this sentiment in discussing San Francisco's imperial power over San Mateo County and Hetch Hetchy through aqueducts, "Newlands (attorney for Spring Valley Water Company) well understood what the ratepayers, then as now, failed to comprehend--that water utilities exist primarily to nourish real estate, not people" (Brechin 99). Brautigan, however, extends this idea even further in exploring the effects of this negative ecological ravishing of rivers, forests, and mountains--on humans physically and emotionally. The yearning for a pristine nature site persists throughout all of Trout Fishing in America, while the depressing reality of nature's extinction pervades Brechin's Imperial San Francisco.