This paper explores and critically interprets the role wilderness travel may play in fostering environmental sustainability. The paper draws upon two qualitative studies that sought to understand human-nature relationships as experienced by different groups of wilderness travel leaders in Canada. According to leaders involved in the studies, wilderness experience enhances emotional connections to nature and encourages a desire to foster similar nature connections among others (i.e. the campers/clients of wilderness trips). However, our interpretations show that leaders' perceptions of wilderness are varied and ambiguous, and that the priority given to "experience" may help to re-inscribe dominant discourses in which nature and culture are dichotomized. The paper discusses these complexities and sheds light on the potential of wilderness experience to contribute to the individual and social transformations that environmental sustainability calls for.