Preserving forest wilderness for the next generation

By Tim Peterson

“The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness.” – John Muir

Clean water, clean air, free flowing streams of snowmelt, lush fields of grass, craggy peaks and dark, damp forests – these are wilderness in the primal sense. Where natural processes dominate, where man is but a visitor, where the views stretch as far as one’s imagination, and where there is space to think, to walk and be renewed – these are wilderness. Thankfully, generations before us allowed nature to continue the work of the eons upon the landscape – they had the wisdom to leave some things alone. These are the places we escape to – reminders of the great wild continent our ancestors knew. Truly stunning places, rich in game and fish – places we can still save for our children. Places where freedom means more than an afternoon at the movies; where responsibility means more than paying the bills on time. Here we can live as those before us lived, free from e-mail and voicemail and text messages – places where alerts are the chattering of squirrels, the chirps of pikas and the call of songbirds. Here we depend upon our own skills, and we rely on our own decisions to keep us safe.  We are blessed in America – our birthright is public land, and we are exalted in its magnificence.  The primeval still exists, and it can still be experienced. The place we came from is still here, and that place deserves our reverence.  Wildernesses with a capital W are lands which Congress – representing every corner of our nation – acknowledges as primitive in perpetuity. Forever. To let a place alone, to the extent that we can, to measure against our buildings and cities the great paved roads of our built civilization. These are places to walk, to camp, to hunt and fish, to turn back the clock to a simpler time. This Wilderness – setting aside some land for future generations – is a uniquely American idea. The concept was born here, and because public lands belong to all Americans, the entire nation has a voice in matters related to our Western commons – no King’s Forest for us – and for that we can be grateful.

These thoughts come to mind as I contemplate why wilderness matters.  Recent research tells us that the general public doesn’t understand what we are working toward when we advocate for wilderness protection. They don’t comprehend why wilderness moves us, and they don’t connect our work with their own lives.  We have told plenty about how and where we do what we do, but we have yet to communicate why we value wilderness, and for whom we do what we do.

“Leave it as it is. You can not improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.” – Teddy Roosevelt

We value wilderness for its own sake, for the flora and fauna’s right to exist unaltered by man’s intrusion. We value wilderness for what it does for our spirits – for how it can renew us. We value our heritage and we value that it is still possible save a piece of what our ancestors saw when they settled here – what First Nations knew millennia before.

Wilderness is even more important in the face of climate change. Species need room to adapt; the most protected ecosystems are the most diverse and they stand the best chance to cope with a changing climate.  Our work on wilderness isn’t a question of recreation, it isn’t about “locking up the land,” it’s about preserving the old ways for many generations to come. The skilled rhetoricians in the wilderness debate belie the true meaning of the quiet reverence of the woods. The elk that bugles at dawn, the fish that spawn in the streams – the rhetoric never reaches their consciousness. They live only for the hunt, to drink and to reproduce. They’ve earned the right to these things through the generations – it is their natural heritage. Wilderness is our natural heritage too, and to separate humanity from nature is folly.

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed… We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in.” – Wallace Stegner

In my many years in the woods, driving, riding, walking out to the edges of wilderness, I often wonder if those who oppose designating wilderness know just how much opportunity there is to drive. It’s staggering. If all the wilderness still left in early twenty-first century America were protected tomorrow, it would take several lifetimes to jeep the fringes, ATV along the trails, and dirt bike down the paths that separate the expanses of wilderness we still have left. That is the great secret. One could drive somewhere new every day for the rest of one’s life and not even scratch the surface. There are more than enough roads to satisfy the masses, there are more than enough trees to cut for lumber and paper and there is more than enough room for mines and gas wells on our public lands.  We are not asking for it all, we are just asking that the places that are still wild be kept wild. Stegner’s drive to the edge will always be possible.

As members and supporters of the Trust I know you understand and value these things, but I’m afraid you’re unique among your neighbors. The future of the Utah Forest Wilderness Program will be about how to better make our values understood by decision-makers, by members of Congress, and by the great majority of people that know that nature is valuable for its own sake, but don’t understand that they have as much right to speak up for it as the miner, the off-roader, the rancher and the logger. The debate will continue, and places will continue to face threats. We have suffered delay over the past year in this new program as the winds of politics shift, but nobody told us Utah wilderness would be quick and easy. It is my hope the Trust’s presence in the wilderness debate can help bring folks together to do great things – to set aside some of our superb national forest wildlands. We can mute the naysayers, rise above the rhetoric and achieve real protections so our children’s children can still glimpse the primeval. We, as a people, deserve nothing less.

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