Poetic Preservation

The Necessity of Wilderness

By Steve Smith, The Wilderness Society

“…An AreA where the eArth And its community of life Are untrAmmeled by mAn… retAining its primevAl chArActer And influence...”

Such evocative phrasing might come from an essayist contemplating the wonder and glory of nature unfettered, or perhaps a promotional discourse luring visitors to explore exotic and faraway places. actually, that eloquent passage is in federal law.

The Wilderness act of 1964 established the world’s first, deliberate system of permanently preserved wildlands, here in the united States, establishing specific requirements and limits for identifying, maintaining, and protectively managing those increasingly rare spots on earth. unique among federal statutes, this one managed to also engage some poetry—bubbling from the enthusiasm of wilderness advocates who worked for 30 years toward its passage—and reflected the breathtaking and contemplative richness of deep backcountry. The law went on: “in order to assure that an increasing population, accompanied by expanding settlement and growing mechani-

by steve smith

zation, does not occupy and modify all areas within the united States and its possessions, leaving no lands designated for preservation and protection in their natural condition, it is hereby declared to be the policy of the Congress to secure for the american people of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness.” even as hard-boiled a politician as lyndon b. Johnson, President of the united States when he signed The Wilderness act into law, said, “if future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them more than the miracles of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it." even with its unique eloquence and inspired wordsmithing, this law really is just a codification of the deeper sense of place that humans have found in wildlands for millennia. no doubt, ancient people sometimes viewed wilderness as a place of danger, with wild beasts and sudden turns of weather threatening their survival with little warning. Other explorers and settlers of this continent—both bygone and modern— perhaps saw wilderness as something to be conquered, altered, and turned to sustenance or profit. Still others have found the quiet power, dynamic beauty, and unending surprises of wilderness to provide inspiration for artistic expression and self-discovery. in each perspective, however, it is the wilderness that calls the tune. Whatever response it inspires from humans, it does so on its own often mysterious terms. in one of the finer modern descriptions of the importance of wilderness, Wallace Stegner wrote of the essential value of wilderness in contrast to a hard-edged, developed world. “Coda: Wilderness letter,” a timeless chapter in his collection of essays, The Sound of Mountain Water, was written in memory of the ancient lessons of survival and ingenuity that we have learned from wilderness. He offered:

What I want to speak for is not so much the wilderness uses, valuable as those are, but the wilderness idea, which is a resource in itself. Being an intangible and spiritual resource, it will seem mystical to the practical-minded— but then anything that cannot be moved by a bulldozer is likely to seem mystical to them.

I want to speak for the wilderness idea as something that has helped form our character and that has certainly shaped our history as a people…

Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction, if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste…

We need wilderness preserved—as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds—because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health even if we never once in

ten years set foot in it. It is good for us when we are young, because of the incomparable sanity it can bring briefly, as vacation and rest, into our insane lives. It is important to us when we are old simply because it is there—important, that is, simply as an idea.

The eminent biologist and nature essayist e.O. Wilson more concisely captured the importance of keeping intact samples of the natural world:

Science and technology are what we can do; morality is what we agree we should or should not do. The ethic from which moral decisions spring is a norm or standard of behavior in support of a value, and value in turn depends on purpose…

A conservation ethic is that which aims to pass on to future generations the best part of the nonhuman world. To know this world is to gain a proprietary attachment to it. To know it well is to love and take responsibility for it.

For all the verbal expression wilderness prompts, it may be its ability to launch both body and spirit to new extremes and discoveries that comes closest to defining its real essence. always an exuberant writer, quintessential wilderness explorer and advocate John muir was lifted beyond the normal bounds of physics and propriety when buffeted and taught by the wild. in one instance, while sitting in a meadow, muir anticipated what was likely to be a spectacular sunset. He impulsively struck out for higher ground in an attempt to see more of the glorious changing light and to enjoy the sight longer.

On he climbed to a windswept tundra ridge, from which he marveled at each changing facet and hue of the dance between light and air. Finally, the sunset subsided, muir savoring every last jot of illumination. With that, he realized that he was now in the dark with no clear passage back to camp. To survive the frosty night, this son of Scotland danced the Highland fling ‘til morning, still joyous in his predicament.

On another occasion, muir sensed a great mountain storm coming on, something that he wanted to observe and experience as fully as possible. He wrote in his essay Windstorm in the Forest, “Toward midday, after a long tingling scramble through copses of hazel and ceanothus, i gained the summit of the highest ridge in the neighborhood; and then it occurred to me that it would be a fine thing to climb one of the trees to obtain a wider outlook and get my ear close to the aeolian music of its topmost needles.” Carefully picking his vantage tree, 100 feet high, he climbed.

Being accustomed to climb trees in making botanical studies, I experienced no difficulty in reaching the top of this one, and never before did I enjoy so noble an exhilaration of motion. The slender tops fairly flapped and swished in the passionate torrent, bending and swirling backward and forward, round and round, tracing indescribable combinations of vertical and horizontal curves, while I clung with muscles firm braced, like a bobolink on a reed…

The sounds of the storm corresponded gloriously with this wild exuberance of light and motion. The profound bass of the naked branches and boles booming like waterfalls; the quick tense vibrations of the pine-needles, now rising to a shrill, whistling hiss, now falling to a silky murmur; the rustling of laurel groves in the dells, and the keen metallic click of leaf on leaf—all this was heard in easy analysis when the attention was calmly bent.

To understand these expressions of others, to compose our own, and to stretch our imagination beyond the structures and strictures of primarily urban living, it is essential that we retain, protect, and cherish a rich tapestry of wilderness. We must know that such places exist and, whenever possible, visit them in order to keep our perspective, to help define and hold onto sanity.

Fortunately, wilderness preservation in america embraces the rich diversity of the continent and the innumerable niches and expanses that compose it. much of that protected wilderness collection has historically focused on the bold, the colorful, and the

grand-of-scale. increasingly, wilderness explorers and wilderness defenders are recognizing the need to safeguard the smaller, quieter, but ecologically essential parcels as they do that celebrated array: wilderness areas of lower elevation, the home of wildlife in transitional seasons; wilderness dominated by water or by desert; wilderness that is perhaps the last refuge for the more rare of the world’s flora and fauna; wilderness that still surprises— these are the new inspirations to action. even as our supply of wilderness diminishes in seemingly relentless waves of development, consumption, and commerce, we become that much more aware of the inimitable details and values of the remaining wildlands and waterways. as we collectively seek to flatten the vertical, to smooth the rough, and to make predictable our built world, we increasingly value the unknown, the yet-toWe crave the natural quiet, find calmbe-discovered, and the yet-tobe understood. ness in the natural darkness, marWe crave the natural quiet, find calmness in the natural darkness, marvel at the vel at the subtle natural sounds, and subtle natural sounds, and grin at the innumerable colors of grin at the innumerable colors of un- untrammeled—unhindered, unshackled—worlds found in trammeled—unhindered, unshackwilderness. rising from the rich natled—worlds found in wilderness. ural bounty of this continent, empowered and emboldened by the visionaries who insisted that wilderness protection be the law, enlightened by the artists and adventurers who best describe these places, and moved by the rich joy, both tangible and intangible, that we find in wildness ourselves, we now must step up to continue defending, singing of, and passing on our enduring heritage of wilderness. as we carry on that teaching and that preaching, we will do well to follow the admonition of John muir: “Climb the mountains [or, i might insert, enter the canyons, cross the deserts, ride the rivers…] and get their good tidings. nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop off like autumn leaves.” △ In 2009, the U.S. Forest Service selected Smith as the recipient of one of their most prestigious honors, the Bob Marshall Award for Individual Champion of Wilderness Stewardship.

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